


What The FU-dge...

by Vasilisian



Category: Naruto
Genre: Although technically Inner came first, And then continue in that same different way, Before the Kyuubi even, But I changed more than I thought I would, But the pacing will be different, Gen, Naruto's already crowded head just gained another occupant, So it's basically going to be different from about halfway through chapter one, The characters will be the same, This is the rewirtten and reviewed version of the original What The FU-dge...
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2018-12-05 22:19:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11587311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vasilisian/pseuds/Vasilisian
Summary: Spending my afterlife looking after the one and only Uzumaki Naruto wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but it wouldn't be too bad right?Right?It would have been easier if I actually had my own body, instead of having to share his.





	1. A New Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> This is a rewritten version of my original What The FU-dge... story. I unfortunately lost inspiration for that one, mostly because I was unsatisfied with the earlier chapters. But I did want to keep going with the story, and still love the idea that inspired me to write that first story, so I have decided to rewrite it, trying my best to follow the plot that I'd already laid out while still writing in a way that I'm happy with.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

This was bullshit. It really was. Being shoved into the as-of-yet unborn body of Uzumaki Naruto and to have to share with said baby was fucking unfair.

I mean, if I had to be reborn into an anime with one of the most convoluted and twisted time-lines I'd ever seen, the least whatever higher powered dumped me here could do was give me my own body, but noooo, I had to share with Mister Optimistic. Also, people that write about being reborn either skip over the being born part or just say it was terrifying and traumatizing while not elaborating.

But let me tell you something. Dying in excruciating pain on a surgery table in some random hospital after being hit by a bus, then waking up in the dark together with what I thought at the time was an idiot, being given birth to not five minutes later, immediately getting kidnapped by a maniac with plans of world domination and then having a twenty-story tall demon fox sealed into you stomach is not the best way to find out you ended up in an anime series with more plot holes than a termite infested tree.

Like, how much would knowing the anime really help me? Kishimoto had all the plot-planning skills of a five-year old. Does anybody actually know what happened during the first twelve years of Naruto's life? Sure, we get some shitty flashbacks about how horrible his life is but no real concrete information. When did he move out of the orphanage? When did he enroll in the Academy? How far did the abusive behavior of the villagers really extend? 

Who the fuck knows, certainly not Kishimoto.

So, back to having a demon fox sealed into my stomach. As a baby, my-er, our?(this was going to get really confusing, really fast) eyes didn't work worth shit. But while I might not have been able to see them, but I could certainly hear his-our(we were sharing a body, they were ours) parents fighting the Kyuubi.

And even through my panic and confusion, Kushina's last words ingrained themselves into my brain, where they would stay, forever reminding me of what she wanted for her only son, the young boy that she gave everything for.

Soon after Kushina breathed her last breath, our baby body gave into exhaustion, the hectic past few hours taking it's toll. Unfortunately, the sudden change from blind baby and dying mother to Naruto's completely white and empty mindscape was too much for my already fragile state of mind, and I passed out after having a bit of a mental breakdown.

What? I got hit by a bus, died, and then I suddenly wasn't dead and sharing a body with the protagonist of a pretty violent anime series who had a extremely horrible life compared to my previous one.

I would have to deal with the hatred and fear of the villagers, Sasuke, fan-girl Sakura, the Sound invasion with Gaara, Sasuke, two years with a pervert, the Akatsuki, Sasuke, the Akatsuki again, some war I never read about properly and Sasuke. Did I mention having to deal with Sasuke?

And this, ladies and gentlemen, was my introduction into the Naruto universe.

Joy.

–

I'm going to be honest, when I found out that I could block out all sound (and image, once our eyes started working) and retreat fully into Naruto's still empty mindscape, I didn't check in on the real world for what I'm guessing was about three months or so.

Occasionally Kushina's words or my own conscience tried to spur me into action, but I'd dealt with two weeks of Konoha's hatred while I'd been figuring out how to block all outside stimulation, and holy sweet mother of god, I really don't understand how Naruto had been able to endure it for years.

The hateful words alone nearly made me lose it, and they weren't even directed at me specifically.

Nothing lasts forever though, and my unstable peace came to an end not three months later, when I suddenly ended up with a crying baby in my arms. But any questions I might have had about how Naruto had gotten here fled when I saw the bruise forming on his face.

Have you ever been so angry that it feels like there's a block of ice in your chest and you want to just drown the world in blood? Yeah, that's how I felt when I saw what some twisted bitch at the orphanage had done to a baby not even four months old.

Kushina's words came back to me in a rush, clamoring around inside my head as I looked down at the crying baby in my arms, her simple wish that Naruto would lead a good life clamping like an iron band around my heart.

Fuck it all.

Fuck the villagers, the Hokage, Jiraiya and the shinobi. Fuck everyone, I refused to sit back anymore and let Naruto become broken young boy I'd watched to dispassionately on my computer screen when I could do something about it.  
__

So maybe stumbling through caring for a child that had a twenty-story fox made out of pure chakra and grumpiness sealed into his stomach wasn't how I'd imagined my afterlife going, but it wasn't a bad thing per se.

For example, I didn't have to deal with the mind-numbingly boring life of a baby, and after some experimenting, I discovered that I had nearly unlimited control over Naruto's mindscape, which made things much more interesting. 

I hadn't been able to find the sealed remnants of Minato or Kushina anywhere, so I was guessing they were actually in the seal that kept Kurama locked away, and not just tucked away somewhere waiting for their dramatic reveal when Naruto was about to go Ultra Super Saiyan.

I also wouldn't have been able to hang out with Baby Naruto,which would have been a damn shame, as he was the most interesting baby I'd ever interacted with.

He seemed to have an unlimited amount of energy, which took some getting used to, but figuring out how to keep him entertained when he was awake and running our body was fun, and since I didn't need to sleep it was easy to keep up with him no matter what time it was.

Also, much to my amusement, I'd made a fox plushy appear once in order to keep him entertained, and the little ball of sunshine has been in love with it ever since. I'd been tempted to give it nine tails, but once Naruto learned about the Kyuubi and the attack, he probably wouldn't find it as funny as me.

Maybe later.

–

I admit, I may not have thought the whole 'pulling Naruto into his mindscape to spend time with him' thing through. Sure, nobody really wanted to hang out with him and the brat loved running around in whatever landscape I'd cooked up and improving his language skills with me, but it did mean that he was quite awkward with it came to normal human interaction.

This was something we'd only found out on Naruto's fifth birthday, when the Hokage suddenly dropped by our shitty apartment. The place was a bit of a mess, since there was only so much I could do to convince a child to clean up after himself, and we never got guests anyway.

So really, it was to be expected that we both froze when we heard the knock on our door, and that when we were greeted with the Sandaime's wrinkled face, the first words out of our mouth were “What are you doing here?”, instead of something normal like “Come in.”.

What? He usually summoned us to his office instead of dropping by.

Luckily for us, the Sandaime seemed to be in an indulgent mood, and simply raised an eyebrow at the rude greeting, the other one joining it when he took in the mess that was our apartment.

(In our defense, Naruto had just turned five and I'd never been the most organized person. And it was mostly just clothes laying around anyways, dishes was one thing I insisted Naruto do no matter how he complained.)

'Do something!' I hissed the words as Naruto, giving him the mental equivalent of a push, and sighed in relief when he snapped out of his daze and stepped aside to let the most powerful man in the village inside our apartment. 

–

The rest of the visit was equally stilted, and really drove the point home not just on just how socially awkward Naruto was, but also how bad the Hokage was at noticing that anything was wrong with Naruto and his living situation, or at least deducing the cause for it correctly.

From what I'd been able to tell, it was like he thought Naruto had made a mess on purpose, or that he was too lazy to clean up, when it was really that he was a child with no adult to emulate aside from the one living in his head.

And that seemed to be the whole big problem with this world. The shinobi were under the impression that kids could look after themselves fine, and that by leaving them to figure things out by themselves they would turn out fine, which obviously wasn't the case.

This would also explain how they let the Sasuke situation get so bad.

Instead of sticking him with a mentally stable family and making him attend therapy for the rest of his life, they instead let him live in a district of ghost, giving Itachi's words and mental torture plenty of time to twist him from the cute kid he used to be into the unstable lunatic we saw in the series.

I was pulled out of my musings by the sudden appearance of a quiet Naruto, who crawled silently into my lap, cuddling close.

“What is it, Naruto? Is what the Hokage said bothering you?” I had a vague memory of the Hokage coming by at some point in the anime and being a dick when Naruto asked about his parents, which turned out to be today.

A minute nod was my only answer, and as I felt tears slowly seep through my shirt, I knew that I had to tell him the truth about his parents and the Kyuubi, the sooner the better. Tomorrow maybe, give him a night to calm down.

By the way? The Hokage is an even bigger dick than I originally thought. What kind of grandfather figure gives the kid of whom he promised his dying mother to look after money and strict words for his birthday? Hell, who does that in general?

The old man had lost what little trust I'd still had in his care-taking abilities today, and it would take a lot of hard work over a long time for him to regain it.

–

The rest of the day was spent cheering up Naruto by deciding what we were going to spend the Hokage's money on.

We received the monthly Orphan Fund, which paid for our food and a few other bits and bobs that we needed to live in at least mild comfort, and we'd never heard anything about paying rent on the apartment so I assumed the Hokage had at least taken care of that.

But the old man had given us ten thousand yen, which was really a ridiculous amount of money to give to a child.

Not that I was complaining, as this meant we could get some new clothes and shoes. We already had two pairs of ninja-sandals, but they were open-toed versions, and our last pair of winter shoes were falling apart at the seams. I don't know if there was a winter-type ninja-sandal, but it wouldn't hurt to go looking for some new shoes.

We could also afford to buy something that wasn't t-shirts and shorts now, and a few stylish jackets wouldn't be amiss. I'd spotted a couple of nice pants on sale at a clothes shop down the road where the owner didn't hate us too much, and Naruto had been wanting to buy the most adorable hat for ages now.

It also meant we could add some variety to our diet, which was always welcome. It had been months since we'd last eaten a piece of fruit that wasn't nearly rotten, and we really needed to eat more meat and rice.

Cup ramen noodles were nice, but neither of us knew how to make proper noodles, and chicken with rice was something even Naruto shouldn't have trouble with, as long as he had the help of both me and a stool to reach the stove. And yes, I was more than aware that I shouldn't let Naruto use the stove, but who else was going to cook?

But first, tomorrow I was going to tell Naruto about the Kyuubi and his parents, although I might have to hold back Minato's name just to keep him from blurting out while he's still developing his self-control.

Either way, tomorrow was going to be an interesting day.


	2. A Revelation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Telling Naruto about his parents and Jinchūriki status turned out to be even more difficult than I'd assumed, which was saying something.
> 
> After all, he was still just five years old, and no child should have to carry a burden like this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was really fun to write, although it did happen in a bit of a weird way xD. Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

I'd thought many times on how I would explain the whole Jinchūriki thing to Naruto over the years, and had finally settled on telling him as much as I could about the history of the Bijuu and the role that the Jinchūriki played during the founding of the other villages and three major wars.

One downside to explaining everything properly was that Naruto would ask where I learned all of this highly-classified information, but I'd never planned on keeping my origins secret, even if I wasn't going to tell him the whole truth.

His parents were a bit more difficult, but even at this age Naruto knew how to keep his mouth shut when it came to important things, like my existence for example, so I'd tell him about Kushina and the Uzumaki clan as well.

Minato on the other hand... How was I supposed to explain to a child that his own father had sealed his fate quite literally minutes after he was born, and then left him behind to suffer for the consequences of his father's actions?

Maybe it would be best to wait in revealing Minato's name, but I'll still tell Naruto about how hard his father had fought to protect him and the village.

The last, and one of the biggest, problems that I had was about the matter of the masked man that was the whole reason Kurama got out and turned on the village in the first place.

According to the manga and anime that was supposed to be Obito, and he did have the Kamui, which is that weird teleporting thing Kakashi and Obito can do thanks to their weird shared eyeballs.

But at the same time Obito “died” at age 13, then spent about a year with Madara, during which he sees Rin commit suicide on Kakashi's Chidori, and then a year later attacks Minato and Kushina when the latter goes into labor.

That would mean that a fourteen year-old teen managed to go toe-to-toe with the Yellow Flash with only a year of training to get from his previous Chunin level to probably like S-rank or something, considering he didn't instantly get killed when fighting Minato.

Although to be fair, this world wasn't fair. At all. Power-ups with flimsy reasonings popped up all the time in this place. Hell, Kakashi and Itachi were both ridiculous, I don't care how intelligent they are, their bodies shouldn't have been able to deal with the stress of a shinobi's life.

Chakra really was bullshit.

–

The morning after the Hokage's visit

I waited until after he'd eaten breakfast to tug at Naruto's conscience, letting him know that I wanted to talk to him. He joined me in the mindscape not soon after, although his excited expression turned confused after he noticed that instead of our usual forest clearing it was an empty room with cushions on the floor.

“What's going on Inner?” I sent him a reassuring smile while patting a fluffy cushion next to me.

“I've got some stuff you tell you Naru-chan. Don't worry, it's nothing too bad, just a history lesson with some extra.” This wasn't the first time I'd compiled little bits of information we picked up while around time and turned it into a lesson, so it was a reassured Naruto that plopped down next to me.

“The story I'm going to tell you today does affect you in a direct way, so make sure to pay attention from the very beginning and not just the parts you find interesting okay?” I shot the child next to me a wry look, getting an innocent look in return.

“Do you remember when I told you about the legend of the Sage of Six Paths?” Naruto nodded, trying his best to look as attentive as possible. I smirked before continuing on with my tale.

“Well, I didn't tell you the whole story. I told you that after a long battle, the brothers sealed away the Ten-Tails into what we now know as the moon. What I didn't tell you was that they sealed away the husk of the Ten-Tails body into the moon. It's chakra, on the other, the Sage sealed into himself, becoming the world's first Jinchūriki.”

“The literal meaning of Jinchūriki is 'Power of Human Sacrifice', but that name didn't come into being until much later.”

“Now, the Sage had two sons, the older of which showed incredible potential and talent, while the younger didn't show any promise. But while the older brother reveled in his power and shut himself away from the world, the younger one worked hard to overcome his limitations and grew more powerful and wise because of his struggles.”

“The Sage was happy with his youngest path, and agreed that working together with others was the way to go, in more old-timey terms.”

I smiled as Naruto giggled at my words, before growing serious. This was going to be the difficult part, even if Naruto didn't know much yet about the Kyuubi and what happened on the day he was born.

“Inspired by his youngest son, the Sage divided the chakra of the Ten-Tails into nine and gave each piece physical form, forming the Bijuu.” Naruto's eyes widened as the implications of my words sank in, and I continued before he could start asking questions.

“For many decades they roamed the world, not interacting with humans at all until Uchiha Madara somehow enslaved the Kyuubi to fight for him when he clashed with Hashirama-sama after the founding of Konoha. But even with the power of the strongest Bijuu, Madara still lost.”

“Unfortunately, this did leave Hashirama-sama with an enraged Tailed Beast that would no doubt attack him and the village if set free, so his wife sealed the beast within herself, becoming the first Jinchūriki since the Sage.”

“Really? She must have been crazy strong!” I laughed at Naruto's enthusiasm, nodding in agreement.

“Mito-sama was indeed a very strong woman, but she was also very good at applying that strength. Remember, having strength doesn't mean anything if you can't control it properly. You must always train properly no matter what you do, to ensure the best results.”

“Now, Mito-sama came from a clan known for their long lives, and she was the Jinchūriki of the Kyuubi for many years before passing her burden along to a younger member of her clan who had been brought to Konoha for that express purpose, not that she knew it at the time.”

“But let me get back on track. After Mito-sama sealed away the Kyuubi, the Shodaime had the idea of capturing the rest of the Bijuu and giving them to the other villages to create balance in their respective powers. As you know, this did not work as the First Great Shinobi War broke out soon after.”

I sighed. “Unfortunately, because of the power they contain, Jinchūriki are treated with fear and hatred in most villages. In some villages it's a bit better, apparently Kumo isn't as harsh in their treatment of their two Jinchūriki, but Iwa's two Jinchūriki have not been seen since the Third Great Shinobi War.”

And now to shatter Naruto's world. I could already see that my words were niggling at his brain, connecting dots now that he'd gotten a big piece of the puzzle. Better give him enough pieces to make the right picture.

“Like I said before, the Kyuubi had been sealed into Mito-sama for years before she passed it one to her clan member. This clan member was called Uzumaki Kushina, and she was your mother.”

Crack!

I dove to the side, grabbing Naruto on my way past as part of the ceiling fell down. I looked around frantically, my eyes widening as Naruto's mindscape crumbled around us.

“Naruto, calm down! You're losing control!” Shit shit shit shit SHIT!

This had not been what I'd been expecting. I must have overestimated Naruto's mental stability. I tried to take control, but Naruto's emotions were too strong and tangled for me to get a grip on his mindscape.

Turning away from the crumbling surrounding, I knelt down, placing Naruto in front of me so I could look into his eyes. “Naruto, look at me. Look at me. Whatever you're thinking,-”

“I killed her.”

The words froze me in place, my platitudes dying on my tongue. How did I not see this coming? No matter how I'd tried to shield him, he still heard the whispers, calling him monster and murderer. Of course this was the conclusion he'd come to.

“Naruto, listen to me. You did not kill your mother. I was there for the whole birth, I heard everything. She survived your birth Naruto. She was fine, if tired, and your dad was making sure the seal containing the Kyuubi wouldn't break.”

I leaned down and caught his eyes, shifting my hands up from his shoulders to cradle his head gently.

“You didn't kill your mother Naruto. Her death was not your fault in any way. Yes, giving birth does put a strain on the seal containing their Bijuu for women, but she made it through fine with your fathers help. You aren't to blame.”

I was distantly aware that there were tears in my eyes the mirror the ones in Naruto's, but right now the only thing I cared about was convincing the child in front of me that he didn't kill his own mother.

“I wasn't going to tell you this, I thought you were too young to worry about something you can't do anything about, but there was a man, a masked man that attacked your parents right after your mother gave birth to you.”

Shit, I really didn't want to tell him this yet, it would eat away at him, but if I wanted to convince him I would have to.

“He held you hostage, tried to make your father give up your mother to him. Your father saved you from him, but got separated from your mother in the process. He ripped the Kyuubi out of Kushina, put him under his control like Uchiha Madara did during his fight with Hashirama-sama, then set him loose on the village.”

Naruto's emotions had calmed down enough for me to get a grip on his mindscape again, and without hesitation I gripped it tightly in a mental grip, shutting down the rumbling and stopping the crumbling floor right before they reached up. Everything gentle floating back into place, like time was being reversed.

I pulled Naruto back into my arms, summoning some warm tea for later. I'd started the story, now I just had to finish it.

“I don't know exactly what happened between your father dropping us off at a secure location and the Yondaime fetching Kushina and you, but I think he fought with the masked man and beat him back along with taking the Kyuubi further away from the village to deal with.”

My plan to not tell Naruto about Minato probably wouldn't work out, but the least I could do was break it to him gently.

“Your mother and the Yondaime worked together to contain the Kyuubi, and then the Yondaime sacrificed himself to get rid of the Beast. Kushina had been fatally injured when the Kyuubi managed to get free for a few seconds, and she succumbed to that wound and the exhaustion of the extraction, but not before imparting some last words to you.”

Naruto stilled in my arms, not even breathing, muscles tense and bones locked in place like a statue.

“Do you want me to repeat them word for word?” Naruto didn't move, but did lose some of his tension, which I took as an affirmative.

“Naruto. Don’t be picky, eat lots and grow strong. Make sure that you bathe every day and stay warm. Also, don’t stay up late, you need lots of sleep. And make friends. You don’t need a lot of friends, just a few. Ones you can really, really trust.”

“I wasn’t very good at it, but keep up with your studies and practice your ninjutsu hard. Remember that everyone has strengths and weaknesses, so don’t get too depressed if you can’t do something well. Respect your teachers and upperclassmen at the Academy.”

“Oh, and this is important. It’s about the Three Prohibitions for a shinobi. Be extra careful about lending and borrowing money. Put your mission wages into your savings account. No alcohol until you’re twenty. Too much can ruin your health, so drink in moderation.”

“Another Prohibition is women. I’m a woman, so I don’t know too much about this but all you need to remember is that this world is made up of men and women so it’s only natural to take an interest in girls.”

“But just don’t get hooked on bad women. Find someone just like me. Speaking of the Three Prohibitions, be wary of Jiraiya Sensei, you know.”

“Naruto, from now on, you’re going to face lots of pain and hardship. Be true to yourself. Have a dream and have the confidence to make that dream come true.”

“There’s so much. Oh, so much more that I want to pass on to you. I wish I could stay with you longer.”

“I love you.”

–

Naruto and I sat in silence for a long time after I'd passed on his mother's last words, sipping on the tea that had been waiting for us and gathering our thoughts.

To my surprise, I wasn't the one to break the silence, and so it took a few second for Naruto's question to register with me.

“You said that my mother was part of the same clan as the Shodaime's wife, and that her last name was Uzumaki. Does that make me...?”

Once again I cursed this world for being so cruel to Naruto, and myself for being the one to tell him at such a young age.

“Yes, you are a member of the Uzumaki clan Naruto. Do you want me to tell you about them?”

From my tone Naruto could tell that something was wrong, so it was with apprehension in his eyes that he nodded.

“Well, the Uzumaki clan are descendants of the youngest son of the Sage, and are as such distantly related to the Senju clan, who are also descendants of the younger brother. They were known for many things, like their incredibly long lives and fūinjutsu skills.”

“You, for example, inherited the large chakra stores Uzumaki were known for, and probably also their ability to survive wounds and illnesses that would kill an average person, which is accompanied by accelerated healing.”

“The grand majority of the clan also had fiery red hair, although you inherited your fathers coloring. They also tended to have matching tempers, and an Uzumaki in battle was always something to be cautious off.”

“But in the end, it was their skill in fūinjutsu that was what most people feared about the Uzumaki. They had a way with seals that no-one aside from the Yondaime and maybe the Nidaime have ever been able to compete with.”

A large sigh escaped me before I could contain it, and I smiled sadly at Naruto, who already looked grief-stricken.

So he'd noticed the past tense then.

“That specialization was the very reason they aren't around anymore. People fear power that can't control, and sometime during the Second Great Shinobi War several Hidden Villages banded together to wipe out Uzushio, the Hidden Village where the Uzumaki lived along with several other smaller clans.”

And now to make a change and give Naruto some hope.

“There are probably some that escaped, though, or simply weren't there during the attack, but they are scattered all over the Elemental Nations. Once we grow a bit older and get permission to leave the village for a bit, we can try looking for some, maybe try to reestablish the clan here in Konoha.”

I tapped my chin in consideration, seeing Naruto light up in the corner of my eye.

This place is practically a safe haven for clans, if we do this right and go about it in an official way, they'd be protected and supported until the clan can stand on it's own two feet again.”

I turned to Naruto, who was practically vibrating with excitement, and made sure twist my face into a serious expression.

“Now Naruto, we do have to go about this the right way. Right now you're five, so you can't do much aside from maybe make some friends and do some basic training and stretches to build up your flexibility and stamina. This is going to be a long-term plan, with lots of careful thought and subtle actions.”

I grinned, and it didn't take more than a second for Naruto to match it with a foxy grin of his own.

“Or at least that's how we could do it, if we want to be boring. We'll head over to the library at some point and look up about clans and stuff, then talk to the Sandaime about it after we graduate from the Academy. In the meantime, we are going to start doing morning and evening exercises.”

Naruto nodded, looking decidedly foxy with his wide grin and closed eyes, until a question seemed to occur to him.

“Ne Inner? How do you know all of that history stuff? You usually teach me about stuff that you hear and put together yourself and made a lesson out of, but how did you know about the Sage and his sons? I know I'm not too observant, but I'd have noticed if anybody talked about him or if we read it somewhere.”

Ah.

–

Telling Naruto about my origins thankfully wasn't nearly as emotionally taxing as telling him about his mother was, although I did tell a quite creative version of the truth. Another thing I hadn't been able to get to was telling his about his Jinchūriki status, and it turned out I didn't have to as he'd figured it out by himself.

I explained it a bit more anyways, just to be sure that he understood that he was not a monster, was not responsible for the deaths of any people the Kyuubi had killed and some other stuff.

He also found out the whole 'the Yondaime is your father' thing on his own, which in my opinion he took quite well, as in he swore like a sailor at a dead man that couldn't hear the man out and then apologizing while crying before drinking some tea to calm himself down.

I really do love tea.

–

It didn't end there of course, after we'd both collected ourselves a bit more Naruto asked me dozens of questions about anything he could think of, and I had to do some quick thinking on how to explain how my world knew about this one and it's history, since I couldn't really tell him that back in my old world this place was nothing but a story made up by a man with shitty time-line planning skills.

Man, Kishimoto really hadn't made things easy for me.


	3. Making Friends (is easier than you think)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naruto and I give our wardrobe a much-needed overhaul, we finally meet Sasuke, who is much more adorable than I was expecting and I find a new hobby. (Itachi was also there, although he was every inch the creepy kid I was expecting)
> 
> Oh, and we also accidentally break into prison.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a lot of fun to write, and also delightfully easy. It's lovely when you don't fear going to the bathroom incase you get out of the 'zone' and then have to labour for half and hour to write two sentances.
> 
> It's also a lot longer than the others, which was a pleasant surprise.

Unlike what the Hokage probably expected, we put a lot of thought into what we were going to spend the ten thousand yen he'd given us on. There were several things we needed, like a new jacket and winter shoes, and adding some diversity to our diet was also very much needed.

So instead of blowing all out money in a few days, we just spent most of it two new jackets, three pairs of winter shoes including a closed-toed version of the traditional ninja-sandals and an adorable frog hat along with some meat and rice.

In the end, we spent seven thousand yen, most of it on stuff we really needed. And we kept the rest safe for later.

We'd also found out that specific merchants and stall-owners were willing to sell us any leftovers at the end of the day for very little money, although not without plenty of sneers and insults. Anybody else would have gotten that stuff for free, but nothing was fair when it came to Naruto, whether it be good or bad.

I'd also insisted Naruto buy a book about basic exercises and stretches so we could improve our stamina, which didn't really need improvement but could use some refinement. Our flexibility could also use some work, and no, this had nothing to do with the fact that I'd always wanted to be able to do a split.

And then all the plans I'd had about a peaceful few months before enrolling in the Academy shattered right in front of my eyes on an otherwise normal Wednesday.

–

The day started out normal enough, with me nagging Naruto to do his morning exercises properly while he whined in the way only children can. After we were done with those, we made a simple breakfast, just some rice with chicken, before heading out to wander through town.

Or well, hurry through town until we reached the forest that grew along the massive wall that enclosed Konoha. I would say it reminded me of the wall from Attack on Titan, but it was simply too small for that, so it was more a 'Great Wall of China' type of wall. Just a very big wall, that didn't really have any use as far as I knew, since shinobi can walk up walls.

Whatever, maybe it was just for the aesthetic.

Anyway, there were dozens of little parks in the forest, some of them less visited than others, and it was exactly one of those parks that we were heading for. There was some stuff I'd remembered about tree-walking, which I really wanted us to have mastered before we entered the Academy since it would probably help with our abhorrent chakra-control.

Except when we actually reached our customary little park, we found it occupied. And guess what set of brothers were hanging out together in the middle of nowhere, eating mochi? I give you tree guesses and the last two don't count.

I don't know what the hell Itachi and Sasuke were doing here, since their clan compound was on the other side of the friggin village if I remembered correctly, although from the stress lines already marking Itachi's face, I kind of thought maybe avoiding their clan was the point here.

This was further supported by the adorable little frown that appeared on Sasuke's face when he noticed us.

“Hey, what are you doing here?!” Rude little bugger, wasn't he?

Itachi lightly cuffed his brother over the back of his head, chiding him in a calm tone as Sasuke clutched the back of his head with a pout, puffy cheeks bunching up adorably.

“Sasuke, don't be rude. This clearing is for public use, that boy has as much right to use it as we do.” I wouldn't agree with him per se, since most people would definitely think that the heir and second in line of the Uchiha clan have more rights than most, especially when compared to us.

I didn't say anything as Naruto and Sasuke started bickering with Itachi looking on, calm in a way that really wasn't natural.

Maybe it was because I knew what he was capable of, or maybe it was because I'd never been able to see Itachi as the hero the Naruto anime tried to make him out to be, but I really didn't like the kid.

Itachi was creepy as hell, no child should have a face that placid or eyes that dead. He put on a mask of politeness, but underneath that I could quite clearly see that his soul was cracked and broken. I don't know why I could see when other can't, but that might just be because I knew to look for it.

The Uchiha heir's only real tie to humanity at this point was Sasuke, not even his mother could reach him at this point, I would bet. I never looked too deeply into Itachi's back-story, so I don't know when Danzo got his hooks in the kid, but I wasn't going to trust him for a second.

Sasuke, on the other hand, was nothing but a slightly spoiled child with mild daddy issues, no matter how much of a shitbag he may have grown up to be later. Something I had no trouble blaming Itachi for, for all his supposed intellect he really didn't know how to think things through properly or admit that he'd made a mistake.

And maybe I was vilifying him, judging him for things that hadn't even happened, but he'd mind-raped his 'beloved' little brother, fucking up any chance the kid might have had of getting out the Uchiha Massacre with his mind intact, all because he was too much of a coward to die at somebody else's hand.

As you might be able to tell, I really didn't like Itachi.

Sasuke was okay though, if a bit annoying.

–

Not very surprisingly, Naruto latched onto Sasuke with all his power and refused to let go, and the little brat was too happy to have an actual friend to complain too much. Itachi somehow how sucked up into their friendship, mostly so that they could mooch sweets off him.

Sasuke was shocked that Naruto didn't have any previous training, and insisted that if Naruto was going to be his friend he should at least be able to keep up with him, and thus their evening practices began. Again, Itachi got involved because Sasuke wasn't actually good enough at anything to teach Naruto.

I'd half expected to fade into the background, since Naruto was interacting with other people on a regular basis, but every night after hanging out with Sasuke and eating dinner, he'd come into the mindscape without fail to talk about his day and all the stuff he'd learned. We discussed the stuff Itachi had taught us, and I helped him work through and understand the explanations the older boy had given.

But I did pull back a little when Naruto was hanging out with Sasuke and Itachi, instead spending my time wandering through the mindscape and adding more detail. The place wasn't infinite, despite what I'd thought in the beginning, and most of it tended to be in the shape of a forest most of the time.

For the past few years, I'd been so busy looking after Naruto that I hadn't really had time to add much diversity to the place aside from messing around with the part we spent the most time in.

One day, about two weeks after Naruto and Sasuke first met, I was merrily walking through a part of the mindscape that I hadn't visited yet,when I noticed that small blue sphere's were growing from the trees like fruit. I paused, one foot still in the air, cocking my head quizzically to the side as I looked at the little blue balls hanging innocently from the tree.

Except they weren't innocent at all, because I'd never seen them before and most certainly hadn't been the one to add them. It couldn't have been Naruto either, he would have told me if he'd added something, which meant that either someone had invaded Naruto's mind and added weird blue spheres, or they were a natural occurrence.

The only clan capable of accessing another persons mind was the Yamanaka clan though, and I'm pretty sure I would have noticed one of them rooting around Naruto's head, if they would even dare to begin with with Kurama locked in here as well.

I'm pretty sure they have a rule against entering the minds of Jinchūriki, it seemed like a bad idea.

Which meant that they were natural, even if I didn't know what they were. But I was one of the most powerful things inside Naruto's mind, just behind Kurama and Naruto himself, which is why I wandered over to a low-hanging sphere and touched it without hesitation.

Dumb move, I know. Luckily karma took mercy on me, and it didn't end up killing me or kicking me out of Naruto's to wander this world as a ghost.

I just spent an hour reliving an ordinary afternoon lesson inside the mindscape, except though Naruto's eyes instead of my own.

The memory ended the same it it began, without warning, and in between one blink and another, I was back in the forest, hand still outstretched to touch the still inconspicuous looking sphere. I snatched my hand back, clutching it to my chest as I stumbled backwards a few steps and sat down heavily on the ground.

What the hell...?

–

Turned out, those innocent little spheres hanging all over the place in that specific part of the mindscape were actually physical representations of Naruto's memories. As soon as I figured that out, I went to work making that part as inaccessible as possible in the possible future event some Uchiha or Yamanaka decided to take a stroll through here.

Like hell was I going to leave Naruto's precious memories undefended, protectiveness filling my chest as I made the trees grow four times their original size, the blue memory sphere disappearing into the gloom as the canopy blocked out the light from the artificial sun.

I watched with a critical eye as wood grew and twisted, turning the once sunny and nice forest into something resembling a cross between the Forest of Death here in Konoha and the forbidden Forest from Harry Potter, although without the unfriendly wild-life.

Too much protection was just asking for people to investigate, to I'd have to spruce up the rest of the forest as well, make some different biomes, maybe add some mountains and ravines to make things interesting. Maybe add swamp somewhere, and a snow biome with pine-trees would be nice as well..

I wandered off, trees and plants shaking and changing all around me thoughts flashed through my head.

–

Naruto was surprised at the already massive change to the mindscape when he appeared later that night, and I greeted him with an excited smile.

I waisted no time in telling him about the Memory Forest I'd found, and the plans I'd made to change the rest of the forest up to be more interesting and diverse, maybe even add some simple wild-life to make the place seem more alive.

“I'm glad.” I paused, turning to look at Naruto with one eyebrow raised at the sudden words. We'd been walking to the Memory Forest so that I could show Naruto what I'd already done to the place, and to add any things he might want to add.

“What for?” He smiled gently, making him seem much older than his five years.

“That you have an interesting new project to work on. I was worried that you'd be lonely stuck in here while I play with Sasuke, but now you get to come up with new ideas and add detail to this place so you won't be bored waiting for me.”

Well would you look at that. I knew Naruto was mature for his age, even if he didn't tend to show it, but this I hadn't been expecting.

I let an answering smile pull at my lips, reaching over to ruffle his blond locks.

“Thanks Naru-chan.” I clapped my hands, turned to look forwards and kept on walking, hearing Naruto fall into step behind me. “On to the Forest of Memories!”

“I thought it was Memory Forest?”

I hate children.

–

And so the four of us fell into a new, if not exactly comfortable, routine. Naruto would hang out with Sasuke from after lunch until dinner, training or playing depending on whether Itachi was in the village and not out on the mission.

But I did notice that he looked a bit less stressed after some time, like Sasuke making a friend had taken a weight off his shoulders. And I suppose it had, because now he knew that Sasuke wouldn't be alone when he wasn't there.

I had a map with a basic layout that me and Naruto had come up with, although I'd had to make some changes as I figured out the already exciting layout of the various special aspects of the mindscape.

Like Kurama's cage for example.

I'd stumbled over the place quite by accident as I was floating around the edge of the mindscape to find out how big the place actually was. My first hint had been a slowly worsening feeling of pressure, making the hair on the back of my neck stand up, an instinctive fear welling up inside me.

The second clue had scared the shit out of me as I plummeted out of the air without warning, only my years of experience manipulating Naruto's mindscape allowing me to call up massive pillow to break my fall, although it disappeared before I could even climb off.

My third clue was the cold, murky water I landed in, my mouth filling with water as I shouted. I came up coughing, shivering as the black water seemed to cling to me, making me feel dirty and strangely violated. Jesus, what was this place?

I got my answer when I looked up, choking on air at the sight of the unmistakable prison bars of the Kyuubi's cage, the tag a seemingly flimsy lock to contain the massive sleeping fox I could just about make up in the darkness.

“FU-dge...” Bad Inner, no swearing. I didn't want Naruto to hear and come running, the last thing I wanted was for him to find Kurama''s cage when he was still coming to terms with his Jinchūriki status.

Although this did answer my question as to where Kurama was located in this version of Naruto's mindscape.

By god, he was even bigger than I'd thought. It was very easy to imagine a creature this size rampaging through Konoha, and that even the Third Hokage, who was also known as the God Of Shinobi, would have difficulty holding him back for long.

It didn't help that he didn't look like a fox, even while laying down. I knew what foxes looked like, and this wasn't it. He looked a bit like a mix between a fox and a monkey, with long limbs far more dexterous than a fox, nine massive tails curled around his body, the entire mass moving in time with his heavy breaths.

And even in sleep, Kurama's face was twisted into a faint snarl, lips pulling back over truly giant fangs that had the faintest red tint to them, as if they'd been covered in blood so many times it didn't come off anymore.

He looked like a monster, no matter how you looked at it, and there was no way in hell I was letting Naruto see him like this, at least not for another year or so. The kid was still struggling with accepting the whole Jinchūriki thing, and I could tell that he hadn't begun thinking about the fact that Kurama had been mind-controlled on the day of the attack.

It would be best to make this place as small and uninviting as possible, and maybe figure out how to place some alarms to warn me if he got close.

I'd been thinking about adding a Forest of Death and Forbidden Forest mix somewhere...

–

Landscaping, it turned out, is incredibly fun when you don't have to obey the laws of physics or have any consideration for delicate ecosystems. Although I encountered my first problem early on.

How crazy could I actually get? Like, could I make an entire upside down city inhabited by aliens that could fly? The answer was yes to the city, no to the aliens. The problem with making creatures wasn't that I couldn't make them, it was that the mindscape couldn't sustain them. I needed to focus constantly in order for them to actually do something, otherwise they would just freeze in place.

But the knowledge that I didn't have to obey the laws of physics, just the rules of the mindscape, changed every thing.

I could do whatever the hell I wanted.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, was when the insanity began. You know those fantasy cities that some insane artists design and draw, the ones that looks amazingly complicated and detailed, like you're going to get lost in seconds if you were to actually try and navigate them? Yeah, I built one of those.

Well, I built several, along with three towers, two monuments and one absolutely stunning valley with differing castles on other side, and a third sitting in the valley itself.

And those were just the buildings, some of the landscapes I designed and messed around with blew my own mind, being able to visualize things into existence was a very addicting but also mind-boggling power.

Because no matter how focused I was, stray thoughts and details slipped in, twisting the original idea into something that even I had trouble figuring out.

Which meant that despite being the one to design and build my five cities and three towers, I actually had no idea how to navigate them, as the insides were either half-finished or created from mostly forgotten memories and thoughts.

It made for fun times during the weekends though, when Naruto and I spent hours on end exploring and making maps of the mindscape, trying our best to make them to scale so that actual navigation would be possible. We failed on the scale thing, but by wandering and making minor adjustments as much as we did, we learned how to navigate by memory, which worked just as well.

One place that saw some major changes was Memory Forest, or whatever we'd called it, as it was now one of the five major cities, Echo Bay to be more precise. The whole place was a maze, with overlapping roads, several hidden and not-so-hidden tiers and a functioning port filled with all sorts of ships and boats.

Not far from Echo Bay also stood one of the three towers I'd built so far, quite aptly named the Dark Tower, since it was made entirely out of black granite, obsidian and polished black opal decorations. It was nearly painful to look at, rising from the ground with jutted angles and sharp edges.

The reason such a foreboding tower stood so close to Echo Bay was because the memory orbs we'd hidden away in it refused to be moved any further away. As for why these specific memory orbs needed a special hiding spot, that was because those were Naruto's memories of when I told him about everything.

Not exactly something you want to leave laying around, because maybe at some point in time Madara or Obito would use their bullshit Sharingan to invade Naruto's mind, and the last thing I wanted them to find was my knowledge of this worlds future.

It hadn't happened in the anime or manga as far as I knew, but I knew that my very presence in this world was probably already spreading ripples of change, so it was best to be prepared.

–

To be honest, the only city that wasn't a complete mess was Echo Bay. All the others me and Naruto hadn't done anything to yet aside from a quick look and the most basic of cleanup, which mostly consisted of anything sticking out that shouldn't. We hadn't even gone inside any of them aside from Echo Bay yet.

And It happened. Not the Uchiha Massacre, that wasn't for another two years (I really needed to do something about that, and army of Uchiha would be invaluable in the upcoming mess), nor was it Naruto starting the Academy.

No, this was something I would not have predicted in a million years, because this was not supposed to be fan-fiction.

Let me explain.

Naruto and I had been exploring the sewer system of Konoha for reasons (that merchant was a dick, a couple of rats were the least he deserved, even if they were the size of a cat.), when we'd come upon a door. Well, at the time we'd thought it was just another normal wall, but in a move straight out of a movie, the moment we leaned against it, a hollow click sounded and we tumbled into an empty room.

Weird, yes, but this was a village of ninja, there were bound to be some weird cubbyholes tucked away all over the place. What was more interesting was the thick metal door that was opposite the hidden one behind us. Naturally, we went to check out what was on the other side.

If we'd paid better attention, we'd have noticed the faded blood-stains in the corner, or rings screwed in the wall to the left that were clearly there to attach chains too. But I was more interested in what was behind the other door, and Naruto was focused on keeping the giant rat in our arms calm, so we just walked out of what was obviously a jail-cell without notice.

I honestly don't know why, since we weren't even trying to be stealthy, but nobody came to investigate, even when we pushed the metal door open too hard, thinking it would be heavy, and it slammed against the door.

(Turns out that there were silencing seal painted in invisible ink all over the place, along with some others, much nastier, seals, but we wouldn't find out about that for a few years yet.)

The corridor on the other side of the door was creepy as all hell, the bland gray walls and wire mesh protected lights looking more menacing than they really should. But the thing that really clued me in that we really shouldn't be here were the identical doors lining the hallway, which we could now clearly see were doors to prison cells.

“Um... Inner?” Naruto's mental voice was weak and shaky, knowing that something was wrong, but not exactly what. He dropped the rat, which let out a weak squeak of it's own before running off.

“Turn around, go back through the door and go straight to the Hokage. We probably found an old entrance built before this place became a prison, but he'd want to know. Go, now, before anyone find us here and we get in trouble.”

I had no problem with the Hokage knowing that we'd accidentally broken into a prison, it's someone finding us here and not letting us explain that I was afraid of. It was much better to appear before the Hokage to tell him about a hole in his security than to be dragged to his desk while being accused of a crime.

We would have made it out as well, if it hadn't been for that damnable rat. I hadn't paid attention to where it had run off to, but apparently rats weren't common around here, and someone had come to find where it had come from, only to find an unmistakable child opening a secret door they presumably didn't know about in one of their prison cells.

I admit, it probably didn't look good, especially considering the reputation we had. The demon child having somehow found way into your prison, leaving after doing Kami knew what? Yeah, I thought we were fucked the moment I felt a heavy hand grip our shoulder right as we were about to slip through the secret door.

A shriek tore out of our throat, and Naruto lashed out on instinct, the defensive moves drilled into his head by Itachi coming naturally after two months of intensive afternoon training.

“Whoa, kid I'm not gonna hurt you!” The massive hand lifted us straight into the air, only increasing Naruto's panic, although I calmed down when I noticed the grip hadn't gotten any tighter, the man's voice sounding more soothing than angry.

I did my best to calm Naruto, smothering his broiling panic with my own steady calm, bringing him back to himself with a firm hand. Normally I'd be much more hands-off about it, he needed to learn how to control his emotions on his own, but I knew very well that this was bringing up bad memories, and the last thing we needed right now was a panic attack.

The man, noticing that holding Naruto up was only making things worse, gently set him down and backed off, crouching until he was smaller than Naruto on the other side of the room. Theoretically, this meant that Naruto could escape through the secret door if he wanted to, but he wouldn't get far in the state he was in, and I couldn't do much aside from small movements when I was in control.

Naruto was still calming down, so I left him to it and took a proper look at the men, instantly noticing the characteristic looks of the Uchiha, along with the uniform of the Military Police. Ah. So this was the official Konoha prison. That was mildly reassuring. Imagine if we'd somehow found a back entrance into the ANBU holding cells, which I was sure existed, even if I'd never heard about them before.

I didn't even want to think about the possibility of this having been a part of a ROOT headquarters, I wanted to stay as far away from Danzo as I could until we were powerful enough to go toe-to-toe with that disgusting, cowardly excuse of a human being. I honestly blamed him for the Uchiha's various misconceptions about how the village saw them, his involvement was too suspicious to be coincidental. 

And yes, I didn't hate the Uchiha. What few members we'd interacted with so far, including this one, had treated us fairly well, even interfering whenever they saw one of the civilians mistreating us too badly. They were a decent lot, just a bit arrogant and scary-looking.

While I'd been considering the man in front of us, Naruto had calmed down, and was silently looking at him as well, although he glanced nervously at the man's relaxed hands a few times.

“I didn't mean to scare you kid, but you understand that I can't just let you disappear through a door I've never seen before after you somehow broke into one of the most secure places in all of Konoha.”

I gently urged Naruto to respond, letting him know I'd be here every step of the way.

“I didn't mean to, I just leaned against the wall in the sewers on the other side, and it opened up into here.” I didn't miss that Naruto hadn't mentioned why we were in the sewers, and I could tell that the Uchiha noticed as well from the way his eyebrow raised, but he didn't call us out, instead standing up and slowly walking towards up again.

“How about you let me take a look at this door, and you wait out in the hallway alright? Don't touch any of the other doors, they'll give you a nasty shock since you're not authorized, and don't wander off, you'll just get into trouble.”

I suppose he wanted to get us out of this room before we noticed the blood-stains, and I more than agreed with him, because I might had noticed them this time, but Naruto hadn't and I wanted to keep it that way.

Speaking of Uchiha, Sasuke was probably going to throw a fit at us being late. Spoiled little bugger. I can finally see what the Naruto of the anime saw in him. He was a nice kid when he forgot that he was an Uchiha, and all the burdens that came with the clan name.

Ah well, all Naruto would have to do is smile at him and apologize in that cute way of his, Sasuke would melt like butter in the sun.

His little baby crush was incredibly adorable.


	4. Breaking and Entering is an Exhausting Business

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naruto and I accidentally break into one of Konoha's most secure buildings, meet some more Uchiha, and I finally get around to fixing a mess I made years ago.
> 
> Also, don't skydive without a parachute kids, especially when you don't know how close the ground actually is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little different from the others, I tried to make the paragraphs longer and also go a bit slower plot wise, just to give you readers a bit of a breather. Also, it took a bit longer because my grandpa ended up in the hospital, which left me feeling very unmotivated to write. He'll be fine, he's gonna get out soon, but I didn't feel comfortable writing when he was sick and I was on the other side of the world.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter, and please let me know if you like this writing style better!

Un-fucking-believable.

I don't know what that Uchiha was doing, but he was taking his sweet-ass time examining that door. It had been five whole minutes, the door couldn't be that complicated or interesting. Just look at it for a bit, maybe flash your funky eye-balls at it, then close it and come escort us out of this place.

How hard could that be?

It didn't help that Naruto had come down from his panicked state, and was practically vibrating with nervous tension, itching to explore, or at least move. He had an excess of physical chakra, both naturally as an Uzumaki, but it had been doubled, if not tripled thanks to Kurama’s presence.

Most people had a more even balance between physical and spiritual chakra, and when there was a large difference between the two, the effects tended to be quite obvious. For example, the Inuzuka clan tended to lean towards a high physical chakra ratio, while the Nara clan was exactly the opposite, with more spiritual chakra than physical energy. This was my theory at least, but for now it functioned so I didn't really care that I didn't have anything other than circumstantial proof.

But seriously, where on Earth was that Uchiha?

I'd drifted back into the mindscape as I contemplated chakra ratios and clan characteristics, not really paying attention to the outside world. 

This meant that when I settled again without checking anything, I was unprepared to come face-to-face with an older bearded man, who was looking down at Naruto through the bars of the tiny window of his prison door. The hell...?

“What're you looking at brat?” How is it that there were dozens of empty cells all around us, and yet Naruto managed to find the one cells that was actually occupied? I marveled at his incredible luck, deciding to not interfere. Naruto could handle himself, as protective as I got sometimes, and he could use the human interaction, even if it was with some prisoner.

“Who are you calling a brat, you old geezer!”

…....

I really should have seen that coming. This was Naruto, after all. He calls the Sandaime Grandpa and Tsunade of the Sannin 'old hag'. Of course he'd respond like this, why am I still surprised at anything he does?

It seemed that the man found Naruto's response absolutely hilarious, his cackling laughter finally summoning the Uchiha away from the secret door, Naruto and I watching calmly as the flustered Police officer yanked the little metal cover over the window, blocking out the man's wheezing as he tried to catch his breath.

“I really don't get what was so funny about that, I just asked him who he was calling a brat.” I snorted, relaxed as can be as the Uchiha put his hand on our shoulder and led us away, mumbling under his breath and glancing around nervously like prisoners were gonna jump out of the shadows and start calling them brats.

I understood a little bit where his nerves came from, a prisoner had talked with us while he'd been obsessing or whatever over the door, and if anything had happened, he would have been blamed, but at the same time, what could that man have done? Shout at us? Call us names?

(Ignorance can be a bliss sometimes.)

–

I had no shame in admitting that Uchiha Fugaku was scary. With a jaw looking like roughly-hewn marble, hard black eyes looking stoically down at us and wide shoulders, the Uchiha clan head made for an intimidating figure.

The fact that we'd been caught trespassing in the prison he was in charge of only made things worse. Naruto was silent and trembling, somehow holding the older mans gaze with wide eyes, hands fumbling with his jacket sleeves. I was silent as well, hiding in the mindscape, wearing the fluffiest sweater and pants I could conjure up in my shook state.

Man, the Uchiha sure knew how to stare somebody down.

Fugaku-san looked us in the eyes for a moment longer, before looking away with a minuscule sigh. “Don't be scared, Uzumaki-kun, you've done nothing wrong. The sewers aren't a restricted area, and I very much doubt you intended to find a hidden entrance into the prison. I'm not going to punish you, although I will inform the Hokage that you were the one to find the hole in our security.”

Huh. He wasn't nearly as cold and harsh as I'd been expecting. Naruto was less surprised, as he didn't have my knowledge about the Uchiha to cloud his expectations, which- well. Maybe I should do the same. Just put aside my knowledge and live in this world, instead of constantly comparing it to the one I'd read about, if only a little.

It was easy to judge people with knowledge gained from others, to look at an Uchiha and say they're stuck-up and prone to hatred. But there were nearly four hundred Uchiha, and I very much doubted that all of them even knew about the planned coup, much less actually be part of the planning.

I wasn't sure if Fugaku was already planning to coup right now, though. The Massacre happened when Sasuke was eight, which was only three years away. Itachi would join ANBU some time next year, shoot through the ranks and become a Captain at age thirteen, which is the age he was when he and Obito obliterated their clan.

Either way, I really didn't want the Uchiha Massacre to happen, but if they went through with their coup d'etat, it would probably kick-start another World War which obviously I couldn't let happen either.

So I had three years to somehow erase or at least improve the bad relationship between the village as a whole and the Uchiha clan, made even more difficult since Naruto was even more hated than the Uchiha by most people.

Fun.

–

Fugaku personally escorted us to the Hokage's office, along with the Uchiha that had found us, who was called Hirume, standing with his hand on our shoulder as he told him in a grave voice about the massive hole in the prison's security, and that he was glad that we'd found out about it, even if it was by accident.

The Sandaime asked Naruto to tell the story from his perspective, listening impassively as Naruto spoke about stumbling over the door, his curiosity at finding out where it led and his fear when he realized he was in one of the most secure locations in Konoha.

“I didn't want to get into trouble, so I was gonna leave and come directly to you to tell you about it, but then the other Uchiha guy found me. He was super sneaky about it, I never even heard him coming, and he told us to wait out in the hallway while he took a look at the door.” Fugaku shot a vaguely disappointed look at Hirume, apparently not a fan of him leaving us alone.

Naruto saw the look as well, and hurried to reassure the two powerful men in the room that the poor guard hadn’t been an idiot about it.

“He warned me not to touch any of the doors, that they’d shock me if I did, and that I shouldn’t wander around either, since I might get into trouble. He looked at the door for a couple of minutes, then came out and escorted me to Uchiha-sama’s office. He asked what was going on, Hirume-san explained, he asked me if it was true, and then we came here.”

Silence reigned the room for what seemed like an eternity after Naruto finished with his story, until it was broken by Hirume.

“If I may, there is something I wish to inform you of, Hokage-sama, Uchiha-sama.” It was clear that he didn’t want Naruto to be in the room, so this was obviously something concerning us. The Sandaime came to the same conclusion, and nodded.

“Very well. Naruto-kun, if you could leave the room for a moment. I’ll call you back when we’re done here to discuss why exactly you were sneaking through the sewers, and why you were carrying a rodent the size of a cat.”

Yikes, he actually sounded a bit stern at the last part.

Naruto looked from to Hokage to Fugaku, to Hirume, before leaving the room silently, closing the door behind him softly. The Hokage’s secretary, who both Naruto and I were convinced was really an ANBU in disguise, glanced over at us before going back to work. “Naruto, go sit somewhere, I want to talk to you face-to-face.”

He didn’t react outwardly, just walked over to the bench across the room, clambering up and sitting down, his short legs swinging in the air. He took a deep breath, laying down sideways and closing his eyes, looking to all the world like he was going to take a nap.

I was waiting for him in the mindscape, inside one of the other, as of yet unnamed, cities, sitting on top of a palace tower with a picnic blanket and food all around me, sipping on a cup of tea. There was a black screen floating in front of one of three large windows, that I had previously been using to observe the events of the past forty minutes.

Naruto grinned at me, flinging himself into my arms and snuggling close, the last bit of tension leaking out of his young body. I held him close, stroking his head and murmuring comforting words into his fluffy hair. Tough as he might be, this had still been a trying past two hours for him, and he could use some time to relax.

When I’d first really thought about it, I’d assumed taking care of Naruto through his childhood would mean not getting a single moment of peace, but a lot of the time he actually preferred silence, especially when calming down.

It might have been that he just had too much energy in general, maybe even an undiagnosed case of ADHD, and that by having somebody else to help managed and order out his head, he could actually channel that energy into something and not just let it whirl through his body unchecked.

Whatever the reason, I’d spent a lot more time enjoying mostly silent cuddles with Naruto than I’d ever thought I’d get, and I loved every second of it, being quite a cuddly person by nature.

–

“Naruto-kun? The Hokage wants to see you in his office.” A small hand was shaking our shoulder, and I let go of Naruto, giving him one last encouraging smile before he disappeared from the mindscape, the black screen gaining color as Naruto opened his eyes, blinking sleepily up at the Hokage’s secretary.

We were both sure that she was actually an ANBU guard, for this exact reason. She was suspiciously nice to us, it was weird. Teuchi and his daughter were the only two civilians that liked Naruto, and I knew that was mostly because Teuchi at least had known Kushina. I wasn’t sure, but I also suspected that he knew Naruto was Minato’s son, since he’d probably seen his relationship with Kushina develop right in front of his eyes.

But this lady I didn’t recognize from anywhere, and yet she was still nice to us. It sounds shitty, being suspicious of a person just because they were nice to you, but considering our situation, I refused to not be suspicious of her. She was nice, which made her weird, end of story.

(And maybe I was just a bit paranoid when it came to how people treated Naruto, but I had good reason. I’d been sloppy once, and it still came back to haunt Naruto at times.)

\--

Wrapping things up with the Hokage didn’t take long, they just wanted to ask a couple of follow-up questions, and within twenty minutes we were back out of the office, this time joined by both Uchiha’s. Fugaku left without a word, Hirume only sticking around long enough to nod at us and murmur a simple goodbye before leaving as well.

Naruto made to follow, but stumbled when the full force of the day finally hit him. The whole ordeal with the entrance might have only taken two hours start to finish, but it was an incredibly stressful situation to be in as a child.

I squeaked in surprise when Naruto tripped over thin air, my teacup dropping to the ground as I popped out of the mindscape, settling in a rush and taking as much control over Naruto’s body as I could.

“Naruto, I’m going to need you to work with me here. We gotta get to that bench alright? Then you can sleep.” It wouldn’t be the first time we’d spent the night on that bench, last year we’d spent a week sleeping here after running away from the orphanage for the fifth time that month. We’d hated the place, and the ladies there hated us.

Hokage had tried to send us back, but we’d refused to go, instead spending our time exploring Konoha, wandering for hours and hours through the cities many alleys and roads, dodging around market stalls and their customers, doing our best to memorize the best ways to get around the city. (The sewers were the best really, they were fast and nobody really thought about them.)

After two days of sleeping on the uncomfortable wooden bench, it had miraculously become more comfortable, which of course had nothing to do with the seals that appeared at the same time it started feeling like an actual bed. The Hokage had escorted us personally to our new apartment five days later, although we still sometimes spent the night here for nostalgic reasons.

It seemed tonight would be one of those nights, even if it had nothing to do with nostalgia this time, and everything to do with being dead tired. Who knew unintentional prison breaks could be so exhausting?

–

After I'd made sure Naruto was settled down, I flew over to Echo Bay, sitting down with an apple at the end of the massive pier, the salt-water waves lapping at my dangling toes. I’d recently gotten some brilliant ideas for making hidden places in the mindscape, where instead of using the normal tricks of this world to hide things, I would use stuff from my old world.

Unfortunately, space had become limited. I would need to make an actual plan as to what I was going to do, because the mindscape was a mess right now, and in order to fix what I already had and add my new idea, I'd have to triple the amount of land I had now. The problem with that was, I'd already expanded the mindscape out as far as it would go.

The only way I could still go was up and down, but I didn't want to just make several floors, that would be too boring and would mess up the open feeling I wanted. Floating islands had been my next idea, but figuring out the sizes and positions would have been hell, and that wasn't even considering how I would connect things together.

Bleh. Maybe I should just start from scratch. Or well, not entirely because Naruto and I had put too much effort into perfecting Echo Bay for me to get rid of it, and I was really fond of the general look of the other stuff as well, but I could just move everything together and then erase as much landmass as I could.

I didn't know the exact shape of the mindscape, but from the way the sky curved in some places and was flat in others, I was assuming that it was kinda like a mix between an American football and a jellybean. I'd thought that the top and bottom were flatter, except I found out when flying around the ceiling that it was so big the curve didn't even register with one of those water meter things people use to see if things are properly flat.

I might not have the mathematical capabilities to figure out the exact size of the mindscape, and even if I did I wouldn't bother, but I did know that if I played my cards right and ignored the laws of physics, I could create the landscape of my dreams. It would take ages and a lot of hard work, because details were a thing I wanted it to have, but I firmly believed that it would all be worth it in the end.

After throwing my finished apple core into the ocean, watching it disappeared beneath the waves before clapping my hands together and shooting up into the sky. I stopped before I got too far up, looking down at the port city Naruto and I had painstakingly put together, and with nothing but a thought and a twitch of my finger, popped it out of place, making it lift up until it was floating next to me.

I fixed it's position in place, turning it into a static floating city, after which I flew the short distance to Dark Tower, where I repeated the process, only this time I floated it back over to Echo Bay and fixing it in place there to avoid cluttering the sky too much. What? It was a nice sky, I'd put a lot of work into it.

I gave the floating city and it's accompanying tower one last appraising look, nodded, then flew off to see what else I would keep. The other four cities, definitely, even if they weren't finished yet, and I was very fond of my jade tower, although I was gonna ditch the third tower, it wasn't developed enough to bother keeping. I also had a trio of castle nestled in in a valley somewhere, which I might keep as well.

I let my eyes fall closed as the air rushed past me, grinning as I shot myself up suddenly, letting myself fall right before I reached the ceiling. I let out a delighted laugh as I tumbled down, the ground getting closer at what would to other be an alarming rate, but for me was just exhilarating. And just second before I would have hit the ground, I snapped my fingers, several tons of earth and rock disappearing in the blink of an eye.

It wasn't enough to reach the bottom, the mindscape was truly massive, and it took me five minutes of falling and removing earth before I actually reached the bottom. Well,it wasn't so much reach as hitting the ground with a thud after removing what turned out to be only a very thin layer of leftover rock.

I did find out some interesting information from that though. Apparently, I couldn't break my bones, but hitting the ground at a breakneck speed would knock the breath out of me and leave me gasping on the floor for several minutes. Not really my smartest move, I admit. I tried to push myself off the white floor with shaky arms, coughing weakly, stumbling two steps forwards before falling to my knees.

“Ouch. No more skydiving without a parachute, at least not when you don't know how close the ground actually is Inner.” Was it weird for me to call myself by the name Naruto had given me,, instead of my real name from my other life? I pondered the question for a while, absently lowering myself to lay down flat on the ground, before coming to the conclusion that I didn't care.

Also, if I could regain the ability to breath properly some time soon, that would be awesome. This whole 'steel band around my lungs' feeling wasn't really to my tastes, I'd had enough of that when I was coughing up blood on the operating table. Wait what?

I blinked, staring shocked up at the distant blue sky, barely visible this far down. Where did that come from? I hadn't thought about the accident for nearly four years, I'd worked through most of the trauma in my first year in here. A frown scrunched up my face, one hand coming up to rub my chest. A huge shard of glass from the bus' windshield had impaled me, piercing several organs in the process.

It hadn't been the blunt force trauma that killed me, but rather the tiny splinters of glass that entered my bloodstream and made countless minuscule cuts in my veins, even ending up in my heart. Painful way to die, especially for someone with a low pain-tolerance like I'd had back then. The broken ribs and collapsed lungs hadn't helped either.

Shaking my head, I pushed myself of the ground with a firm shove, hopping back onto my feet in a physically impossible move, ignoring the effects of gravity, one of the few things the mindscape had come with even before I'd arrived. The only thing the other Naruto had in his mindscape had been Kurama's sewer, he'd talked to both of his parents in plain white surroundings if my memory served me right.

Clapping my hands together, I looked around, taking in the slightly lopsided crater I'd created, before shrugging and deciding that I might as well take out at least the bottom half of the earth and rock that took up so much of my precious space. I hadn't built anything underground, and no structure I wanted to keep had a very deep foundation, so this much should at least be safe.

I fixed the top layer of earth in place with a snap of my fingers, before cracking my fingers and closing my eyes. Fixing large masses in place was relatively easy for me, but removing a landmass this big would be a lot harder, especially since I'd first put it into place years ago when I was still figuring things out. There was a reason I removed the earth in parts while falling.

The thing was, I hadn't paid much attention when I'd first created the dense mess that was the foundation of the mindscape, as I'd been too busy figuring out how to look after baby Naruto to really pay much attention. So I ended up with something that wasn't dirt, not really, and neither was it rock. It was just a giant mass of stuff that vaguely resembled the dirt you found in the real world.

I'd replaced a thin bit of the top layer three years ago, when I couldn't crack the earth I'd created enough for my trees to grow. It was simply too dense for anything to be able to penetrate it, which I hadn't even thought possible. I'd since learned that the denser I made something, the harder it was to control or change at a later date, which is why everything I'd recently made was mostly hollow or just not very dense.

Getting rid of this mess would probably wipe me out quite a bit, which it why I was doing it now instead of later, when I'd be tired from flying all over the place and lifting all my various construction into the sky. I didn't get physically tired, probably because I didn't have a real body, but the cities and such were denser than my trees, simply because I wanted them to be able to take a blow if hostiles ever tried to mess Naruto up from the inside.

Like Madara, for example, or Obito. And depending on whether or not I could somehow stop the Uchiha Massacre from happening, it might even be Itachi or dickish-Sasuke that Naruto and I would have to fend off. Hopefully, none of them will decide that invading Naruto's mind is a good idea, but either way it's good to be prepared. Better safe than sorry, after all.

Anyway, enough procrastinating. I had some major renovations to get to, and I wanted at least the basics done before Naruto woke up tomorrow morning. Looks like I'll be pulling an all-nighter, not that I could sleep anyway. But I would probably regret working all night tomorrow when I'd have to help Naruto analyze the whole prison thing in detail. That man... He'd been very odd, now that I think about it.

I shook my head, clapping both hands on my cheeks in an effort to focus. “Tomorrow Inner. You have renovations to get to.” And without further ado, I reached out mentally, throwing a net of thoughts over the mass of dense earth stuff that I wanted to get rid off, and deleted it with a fancy hand gesture.

….

Youch, that actually hurt.

I blinked, finding myself again looking up at the tiny pinprick of the blue sky above, only this time there was also a giant landmass floating around that little blue patch. I lay there silently, turning my head side to side, taking in the strangely magnificent and beautiful sight of this massive piece of earth that was just floating high up in the sky.

I could see places where my control had slipped a little, either in the form of jutting spiked sticking out like daggers, or in the form of sizable holes, like the one to the left of me. I hadn't expected it to be quite so hard to get a proper grip on the mass, it had been like trying to catch an eel in a mud-bank, and your hands are covered in dish-soap, just to make it that much more difficult.

I scrunched up my face, sticking my tongue out at the earth floating above me, before rolling onto my side, tucking my arm under my head and closing my eyes. A little rest was just what I needed right now. And I didn't have to worry about oversleeping either, since I can't actually sleep. I'd had to deal with some very boring nights when Naruto was still young.

I don't know why I hadn't gotten around to renovating earlier, it would have been a nice thing to fill my nights with, but I guess I'd just been too busy working through the whole 'dying violently' thing in the beginning, and then Naruto became old enough to spend most of the night 'awake' in the mindscape. He'd only recently started sleeping properly through the nights again, which left me with a lot of time to fill.

I didn't mind, not really, I had plenty to do these days, and having some time alone was also nice. My eyes popped open at that thought, and I sat up in a rush. Oh my god, I sounded like a parent! Wait, I was. I'm a parent. I've been raising Naruto for the past five years, I'm the main adult in his life. My breathing sped up, panic rising to choke me.

I can't be a parent, I was barely an adult myself! I blinked, panic stopping in it's tracks as a thought occurred to me. I died at age seventeen, add five years, that made me twenty-two. It wasn't too common, but people did have kids at this age back in my old world, and I'm pretty sure they got married even younger in here, since people tended to die young.

Huh. And I really had matured a lot these past five years, a lot of the things I urged Naruto to take caution with now were things I would have done with only a little hesitation back when I was alive. Take today for example. I'd told Naruto to get out as soon as I realized the place was a prison, but if it had been just be in Naruto's body, I'd have taken the risk of exploring, depending on the Hokage's protection when I inevitably got into trouble.

We ended up getting caught anyway, but my whole thought process has definitely changed now that I had a child in my care. I'd really grown up a lot, even while stuck in here and not being able to interact with the outside world, and it was all thanks to one little brat with a grin like sunshine and a personality to match.

He really was my kid, wasn't he?


	5. Let The Renovations Begin! (Again)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Naruto sleeps, I think about all the many, many problems I have to fix, try to make a plan for the future and do my best to get shit done while getting distracted by thinking about aforementioned many, many problems.
> 
> I really needed to write down a list of all the things I needed to get done, and my time limit as well, because all this trying to remember stuff, then remembering when I'm busy with other things has got to stop before it becomes a real problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took a bit longer because 30 hours of total travel time from Australia to Spain completely wiped me out for a couple of days, and then my family and I had to figure some other shit out, but it's here! And I have a special little present for you guys in the end notes, so be sure to read all the way to the end!

Once the idea of being Naruto's parent occurred to me, it refused to leave me alone. Every time I acted in an even vaguely parental way suddenly rose to the forefront of my mind, all the little gestures and murmured words swirling around, seemingly taunting me with all the facts I'd missed or ignored over the years.

It was obvious, looking back, that not only had I taken the role of a parent, I was his mother, which was a weird thought to get used to. I was firmly ignoring the little voice that was taunting me with the fact that I'd been a teen mom, although the other voice that tried to say I was Mary since I had a kid without having sex was shot down after I pointed out that I hadn't actually given birth to Naruto.

And yes, I was very much aware that arguing with voices in your head wasn't exactly the most sane thing to do, but then again, I hadn't exactly been very normal to begin with, even before I died. Dying probably hadn't helped in that regard, especially when I ended up in a world I thought fictional caring for the protagonist.

My point was, I wasn't anybody's first choice when it came to childcare, but it wasn't like there was a line of people waiting to care for Naruto, so I would just have to continue doing my best, just with the added benefit of knowing that I was basically Naruto's mother in all but blood, and such the one he'd emulate the most.

Children learned from example, I knew that even without having ever had one myself, so as long as I behaved well, Naruto should be fine. Hell, he'd ended up turning out more than fine in the anime and manga as well, and the only people that had been halfway decent to him had been the ramen guy, his daughter and maybe the Hokage on occasion. And Iruka, but I didn't know exactly when he first became nice to Naruto, so I wasn't sure if I could count him.

I clapped my hands to my face, scrunching up my face and sticking my tongue out at the sky before pushing myself off the ground, where I'd been laying like a dead fish thinking about parenthood. I looked around, once again admiring the impressive view that was a massive chunk of land just floating in the sky, turning around in a circle as I considered what I should do next.

I could probably divide what was left of the mass in half again and get rid off that without having to worry about messing up since it was much smaller now, but I wanted to regain some of my energy first, so instead I would just fly back up and fix the rest of my structures up in the sky, then get rid of the rest of the mass, which would wipe me out again. I'd take another break, maybe think some more about parenthood, then get back to work designing and building my new landscape.

Crouching down, I looked up at the hole I'd created, took a guess at how far up the ceiling was, then launching myself into the air, reaching the ceiling in seconds and stopping just in time to prevent myself from repeating the whole 'pancake but not really' thing. I could have just flown at my normal speed, but this actually took less energy, since I exerted force only once when taking off, instead of continuously holding myself up in the air.

I'd concentrated my power into my legs and jumped, with a lot more force than any human being could be able to exert or withstand in the real world, even if they were using chakra. Only a Jinchūriki would have been able to withstand this amount of force, and only if they were cloaked in their beast's chakra, like Naruto in the anime when he had this bubbly red force surrounding him in the shape of a fox, tail included.

Or at least, I assumed that the average shinobi wouldn't be able to withstand such a force without becoming flattened, but maybe chakra was even more of a bullshit, physics-defying power than I thought.

Either way, I was now floating about ten meters away from the ceiling, which was actually pretty close if you consider the distance I traveled, and the speed at which I'd been going. Damn, I was good. But I wasn't up here to admire my own skills and waste energy floating, I had a job to do, and only about about eight hours to do it, if I wanted to get the basics done before Naruto woke up.

Although, I could do one thing while I was up here...

Looking around with a considering eye, I tested if the ceiling would go any higher (it wouldn't), before shaking my head. I could do that later, it would take time to figure out the specifics and how I was going to isolate it enough for the vacuum to work. Space was an awesome thing, but creating my own little galaxy would take too long right now.

Yes, I was going to create a mini galaxy, space was too cool for me not to. Well, it wouldn't be a galaxy, more like four or five mini-planets floating in a vacuum with two mini-stars. It would resemble something along the lines of Mario Galaxy more than real space, it might even have the same gravity laws (if you jump high enough, you can float over to the other planet), which would still be pretty awesome. 

And actually, if I did make it more along the lines of Mario Galaxy, I could mess around with the physics even more than I had already been planning. I'd make a part of it like real space, or as close as I could get to it when most of my knowledge came from movie and books, and the other part could be a mix of Mario Galaxy and other fantasy stuff. Like space dragons.

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait, _wait_. Mario Galaxy had save files, most video games did. What if I could save one version of the mindscape, make another one, save that one as well, and switch between the two, or however many I wanted to, at will? I dropped fifty meters out of the sky as excitement and shock took over my brain, and I caught myself using instinct only as a whole new world opened up to me, just like it had when I found out the laws of physics didn't have to apply if I didn't want them to.

I rushed down to the ground, landing in a rush and clipping a tree on my way down, pushing my hair out of my face as I looked around wildly, thinking up and discarding idea on how to actually save something. I'd done something along the lines of saving when I'd made my first forest, creating four trees with details and then replicating them until I'd filled the entire mindscape with them.

But there was a difference between holding a tree in mind and recreating thousands identical ones and saving an entire landscape, putting it away as 'save file' and then pulling it out later and having the exact same landscape as before. I became slowly less excited as I considered the difficulty of actually 'saving' something, my hands still absently tugging branches and leaves out of my hair and clothes as my thoughts raced.

This would be something to try and test later, when I was at full power and not busy with other things. Tomorrow evening maybe, when Naruto was with Sasuke...

I frowned, hands stilling as I was reminded of the Uchiha dilemma. Maybe it was about time I started paying more attention to the hours Naruto spent with Sasuke, see if I could figure out some way to help the Uchiha integrate with the village, properly this time, not like how Hashirama and Tobirama did it.

In fact, maybe I should tell Naruto that something was wrong with the Uchiha's, that they needed our help to become friends with the rest of the village again. It probably hadn't registered with him at the time, considering how tired he'd been, but when the Sandaime had asked Naruto to repeat the story, it had shown that the old man didn't entirely trust Fugaku's words. The Uchiha clan head's face had become a blank slate the moment we'd left his office, any sign of the kindness he'd shown us locked away behind an impenetrable wall, but at the subtle sign of the Hokage's distrust, his left calf had clenched a little.

It wasn't a very common tell, most people tended to clench their hands or jaw when suppressing emotions, but I hadn't taken my eyes off the man from the moment we'd first left his office, doing my best to keep observing him even when he was only partially visible on the screen that showed what Naruto saw, and even then the only reason I noticed it because his pants shifted around the tensed muscle.

Naruto hadn't noticed yet, but he'd never met or seen a civilian Uchiha aside from Sasuke, who I didn't really count, since already he had the skills the kill the average civilian. They never left their own district from what I'd been able to tell, or at least they didn't enter the districts we visited, which I found extremely unlikely. But this didn't show good things about the relationship between the village and the Uchiha.

None of the other major clans were as separated from the village as the Uchiha, not even the Hyuuga. They had their own clan ground, with houses and training grounds, but only the Uchiha had their own shops and market. They were like a little village all on their own, relying on Konoha only for electricity, water and gas. I didn't know if they also had a separated sewer system, although that wouldn't be too difficult to find out.

The point was, the only Uchiha anybody ever saw were the ones part of the Police Force, which didn't give the citizens of Konoha a very good impression of the only founding clan still around. It said a lot that the Senju, a clan mostly gone and with one member technically a traitor, was better regarded than the Uchiha, a clan more than two hundred members strong and the ones that kept the village safe when not at war.

The citizens of Konoha, both civilian and shinobi, had to be at least a little wary of the Police Force, this would help keep the crime rates low and make people back down from fights if they saw an officer, but the civilians were just scared of them in general since they never saw any of the civilian Uchiha, the people that were just like them. I was also convinced that Danzo was spreading rumors about the Uchiha, mostly about their involvement with the Kyuubi attack.

It was the perfect rumor as well, since it was hard to disprove. Nearly everyone in Konoha had lost something that night, whether it be a person or their home, and grief brought anger. They wanted to blame somebody for their misfortune, and while their main target was Naruto, thanks to the rumors, the Uchiha were another scapegoat. And while it would suck if the civilians didn't trust the Uchiha, it was the lack of trust from the shinobi that was fucking the Uchiha over.

There was nothing quite like a lack of trust from the people you fought side-by-side with to mess with your head and your temperament. And since it was just rumors, the Uchiha couldn't really come out and declare that they didn't have anything to do with the attack, because then people would think that they were denying it too much. 'Me thinks doth protests too much' indeed.

This lack of trust would sour the relationship between the Uchiha and Konoha shinobi, and this has probably bled over and become visible to the civilians as well by now, further widening the rift between Konoha and the Uchiha clan. It might have also led to the Uchiha civilians pulling back entirely and shutting themselves into their district, which would have only made things worse.

All in all, it was a huge mess, and I was the only one that knew it had to be fixed, and fixed now before permanent damage was dealt in the form of a deadly thirteen year old and Madara-who-was-really-Obito. To make things more difficult, I couldn't even directly do anything about it, I had to have a five-year old do it for me.

Which, considering this was Naruto, might actually not be that bad. After all, this was the kid that talked dozens of people around to his side, including but not limited to genin-Gaara, Neji, Nagato, Obito and several other villains whose names I couldn't remember right now. One of his most powerful weapons was his Talk-No-Jutsu, so maybe I should just point him at this problem and let him figure it out with minimal interference.

Not the best of plans, I'll admit, I'd have to come up with a couple of backup plans, but I was hoping that Naruto's natural charisma would somehow fix things, at least enough to stall the planning of the coup, which caused the Massacre in part. The other part was Danzo being a power-hungry dick and wanted to get rid of a perceived threat. Bloody coward.

I wasn't under any illusion that Naruto would be able to fix the rift between the Uchiha and Konoha, not at the age he was now, but maybe he could bridge it at least, and go about filling it in when he'd older and in a position of power. Maybe Hokage, but hopefully sooner than that. After all, he had an in with Tsunade, she didn't have Sarutobi's connection with Danzo to cloud her judgment when it came to his borderline treasonous actions.

Hells, it wasn't even borderline, he'd tried to have Hiruzen assassinated and went against his direct orders several times, he was a traitor. Hopefully Tsunade would listen to Naruto if he told her something was wrong, and she'd deal with him the way the Sandaime should have years ago. But that wouldn't happen for another seven years, and the Uchiha clan didn't have that much time. Something needed to be done, and quickly.

I don't know how Naruto would fix it, maybe he'd convince a few Uchiha's to hang out with him, a couple of villagers would see, word would spread and then... I sighed. Then things would probably get worse, as people saw the demon child hanging out with the people some say set the demon loose all those years ago. It would suck if I tried to help, only to have things backfire like that...

I paused, cocking my head as a thought occurred to me. Tsunade wasn't the only person with influence Naruto would become friends with, he was also a member of the Rookie Twelve. Or was it Rookie Nine? Eh, it didn't matter. What did matter was that after the Chunin Exams, Naruto became friends of sorts with the grand majority of the clan heirs.

So what if I sped up that friendship a bit, encouraged him to make friends with Kiba and Shikamaru, maybe even Choji and Shino. Hinata would come to him first, at least partially, so I'd only have to point her out once and Naruto would latch on to her with his inescapable friendship, and viola! Three clan heirs, one second in line, all friends with the demon kid. I wouldn't even need to encourage Naruto to introduce Sasuke to them, he'd do that all on his own.

If their kids got along, hopefully it would get rid of some of the tension between the other clans and the Uchiha. And if the major clans got along better, the smaller clans and shinobi families would follow. The civilians would take longer, they tended to judge quickly and hold onto grudges, but they'd get there eventually.

Clapping my hands to my face, I frowned to myself, trying to remember what I'd been doing. Jump up the ceiling, thinking about space, Mario Galaxy.... Oh yeah, saving! I'd been deciding to do it tomorrow before remembering the Uchiha mess. After considering it again, I shrugged and began walking on air towards one of the towers I wanted to keep (solidifying the air beneath my feat for a few seconds was easier than flying). I had more important things to figure out right now.

I spotted my spiraling jade tower in the distance, the perpetually setting sun glinting off the gold-inlaid tower, it's paper-thin emerald windows casting gorgeous clear green reflections across the land around it. The thin black opals set into the tower along with the curling gold patterns made for a fascinating contrast as well, so all in all, this was one of my favorite towers.

Skipping my way through the air, I made my way over to the Jade Tower in about five minutes, pausing for a few seconds to take in the beautiful sight before snapping my fingers and raising it up into the air, fixing it into place with another finger snap. I could do it without the hand gestures, but they improved my control and they also made me feel cool.

Just like bow ties. Bow ties were cool.

–

After the Jade Tower, I switched over to flying simply to cut down on my traveling time, as I had yet to find a faster method of travel. I was working on teleportation, but I hadn't yet figured it out yet. It was possible, I knew it, I just had to figure out what I was missing. Pausing in midair, I scratched at the back of my neck in thought, before shaking my head. Nope, I had a lot to do, and only limited time to do it in.

I continued my flight, heading over to my castle/valley combo to pick that up, since getting the proportions of the valley right in conjunction with the castles had been a pain in the ass that I didn't want to repeat later. I sighed to myself, twisting idly around one of my shitty low-graphic mountains that I never bothered finishing. I really needed to work on my concentration skills, I got distracted way too easily.

Imagine if that happened when Naruto got into a fight later on, and instead of paying attention to his surroundings while he focused on his opponent, I instead get distracted thinking about the history of chakra or whatever. Hell, I hadn't even noticed that the room the secret door led to was a cell, it had taken me more than a minute to notice the kinda obvious bloodstains and other signs of non-voluntary inhabitance.

Another project for me to work on. I had to figure out teleportation, how my new landscape was going to be shaped, how to create save files, the mysteries of space and how to recreate them on a smaller scale, my concentration issues, the Uchiha mess, which was also related to Danzo, and I still couldn't take control of Naruto's body, which would be an invaluable ability to have in case something happened and he couldn't do it himself.

That list was bound to get longer the older Naruto got, since this world had many, many issues, most of which Naruto got involved with at some point or another. Now that I thought about it, maybe I should have Naruto look for the community library, there were so many things I wanted to look into. I frowned, stopping above the Twin Castle Valley, or whatever I was going to call it, realizing that Naruto didn't do well with sitting still while in the real world.

Here in the mindscape his excess energy didn't affect him, so sitting still and lazing around was no problem for him, but I had not yet managed to get him to sit on a chair for longer than six minutes while flipping through a picture book to help with his reading skills, and he hadn't even been sitting still then. If we were to go to the library, his fidgeting would no doubt be used as an excuse to throw him out.

I ripped the valley out of the ground with a sigh, and after fixing it into place, I flew off again. I'd have to move 'controlling Naruto's body' up on my list, if I could at least keep his body sitting and use his arm to move the pages while he ran around in the mindscape, I'd be golden. I flipped in midair as my foot clipped a high tree top as another thought occurred to me.

If I could learn to do basic movements, I'd be able to attend class at the Academy in Naruto's place. Well, maybe just the theoretical classes, I doubt my control would be good enough for me to sub in for his taijutsu classes as well, and besides, Naruto was actually really good at learning things and mastering techniques, he just needed one good explanation to focus on.

This was after all the kid that learned the Kage Bushin in a couple of hours, learned the Rasengan in a week with only minimal help and mastered his Wind nature chakra element whatever in weeks when it should have taken years. And not just that, he made like dozens of variations of the Rasengan, each one more powerful than the previous. Not to mention all the things he did with his Kage Bushin.

He was brilliant at learning and modifying jutsu's, as long as they didn't require really precise chakra control, like most healing techniques, or just very little chakra, like the normal Clone Technique. His taijutsu wasn't bad either, he just needed a good teacher and hours of practice, which Kakashi could have done for him if he'd been less focused on catering to original!Sasuke's massive ego.

Seriously, that kid had so many issues, and absolutely none of them were dealt with or noticed by any adult at all! Like, I get that Kakashi might have been too emotionally stunted to properly notice or categorize all of the things that were wrong with Sasuke, but the kid stumbled over the corpses of his family to his house, saw his beloved brother standing over his dead parents, and then spent three days in a coma watching said brother slaughter his clan.

Why was he never put in therapy? Hell, does Konoha even have therapists? Does therapy even exist in this world? Or did they just lock up their shinobi for a few hours with a Yamanaka when their minds inevitably cracks under the pressure of their violent lifestyle and unhealthy coping mechanisms. I wouldn't be surprised if four out of ten shinobi killed themselves before the age of thirty, since death seemed to be the only way out of the shinobi life.

Was that why powerful shinobi were such nut-cases? Was their eccentric behaviors a form of stress-relief?

I sighed, adding yet another item to my ever-growing list of issues to fix. I knew that Naruto and I wouldn't be able to fix everything, that this world had many, many problems that weren't easily fixed, but the least we could do was try, and to set the stage for later generations to continue on the path towards peace, real peace, so hopefully mental stability as well.

–

It took me about thirty minutes to finish lifting everything off the ground, and by the time I was done, my energy levels had risen back to normal and I was ready to remove the second half of the mess I'd made all those years ago. After landing on one of my now floating cities, I cracked my knuckles, took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

This time would be easier than before, since I didn't need to be careful to remove too much and wiping myself out, and neither did I have to worry about accidentally getting rid of something I wanted to keep. That didn't mean it would be easy, because the whole thing was still way denser than anything else I'd ever made, but hopefully I wouldn't do that weird 'passing-out-but-not-really' thing again.

And there I went again, getting distracted. I clapped my hands to my face, eyes still closed, focused on the landmass and clicked my tongue.

…

Okay, not so bad this time, but it still brought me to my knees. I blinked several times, trying to clear the spots out of my vision, raising my hands to cradle my head. It did give me a hell of a headache though. Lowering one hand and vaguely waving it around, I summoned a glass of water with a twisty straw, raising it up and sipping slowly at the clear liquid.

For all my talk about real world and mindscape, for me, this place was real, and it had real effect on me. So I could get headaches, I could eat food and drink water, and apparently I could do a weird pseudo passing-out thing. This was my reality, it was real, it just had different rules than the other real world.

I couldn't break bones or sustain other injuries for example. My skin didn't get damaged, no matter what happened, but I could feel even the lightest touch. I didn't need to eat or drink, but I could if I wanted to, although it seemed to disappear before it reached my stomach, because I've never needed to use the bathroom. I couldn't sleep though, even if I wanted to. It simply wasn't possible for me to lose consciousness, no matter what happened.

The rules that applied in the landscape seemed to mostly apply just to me, as in they only restricted me, not the mindscape itself. My biggest obstacle when it came to manipulating the mindscape was my own mental capabilities and strength. The better I got at visualizing things, the less I had to perfect them afterwards, and the more things I created, the easier it got. The mind was a muscle you could train, you just had to go about it the right way.

My headache had disappeared, and I dropped my glass, making it poof in to glitter when it hit the ground just because I could. I stepped closer to the edge of the roof, looking down at the ground, my eyes widening as I took in the massive white ocean stretching out as far as the eye could see. The mindscape looks a lot smaller when there's actually something in it besides floating cities and castles.

Well, I couldn't actually see any of the other cities, or anything else for that matter. Endless white, not blinding, just.. white. I couldn't even see any signs of Kurama's cage anywhere, which I knew was only a few kilometers away, but then again half of the time it wasn't really here, or there, or anywhere. It just was, and if you got close enough, you could see it, but the rest of the time it was hidden.

Shaking my head, I looked around again, this time with pursed lips and a considering look in my eye. How was I going to do this? I took a step forwards, dropping off my elven inspired city down to the distant ground. It was even harder to see how far the ground was now, with no shadow or contrast to show depth, so I reached out mentally and created a cushion of force right below me that would instantly stop me without the nasty effect of actually hitting the ground.

Done preparing for my landing, I closed my eyes yet again, enjoying the air rushing past me, tugging at my body. I loved falling, the weightless rushing sensation something that I'd dreamed of even in my previous life but never got to experience. Gliding was nice, flying was awesome, but there was just something about the simplicity of falling that relaxed me like nothing else could. It calmed me, soothing my endlessly buzzing thought and bringing me peace.

There had been times during Naruto's baby years when I needed a break from everything, and I'd create a loop in which I could fall without end, not having to worry about landing or flying up into the sky again. Sometimes I'd stay in there for hours on end, just falling with my eyes closed. It was the closest I could get to sleeping, and despite not getting tired, it was nice to rest my mind at times.

My fall slowed, and my eyes fluttered open just before I gently touched down on the ground. Force cushions were one of the first things I'd figured out how to make, back when I was still getting the hang of calling things into existence. Naruto had still been a baby back then, and I'd been wishing I had something comfortable to lay him down on when I suddenly bumped into this barely visible thing that felt like a marshmallow.

They'd come in very handy over the years, especially once I figured out how to modify them to suit different situations.

I hopped up onto my feet, looking around and considering the dimensions of the mindscape. It was kinda like a capsule, only flatter at the top and bottom. I was reserving most of the ceiling for my space bit, I also wanted to build a Greek-style city on top of a cloud as well, like my very own Olympus, which would float somewhere in my leftover ceiling area.

As for the bottom, I wanted mountains along the edge, a few lakes, some simple towns here and there with connecting roads, then have parts where the ground curved up into a sort of second floor, except the gravity changed as well, so it was upside down, with the two layer facing each other with connecting parts with their own gravity so you could just walk first sideways, then upside down.

The second 'floor' would be rockier than the first one, more along the inside of a cave than an open landscape, with rock spires, freezing cold lakes and rivers along with some wooden structuring bringing to mind an old-school mine. Maybe add some lanterns and shiny gemstones to reflect the light around, I'd figure out how exactly I wanted to do that later.

But it wouldn't be a full floor, it would only take up about a third of the available space at that specific level, maybe even just a fourth. The rest would be taken up by other stuff that I'd have to figure out later. For now, I could start with the bottom floor, where I could also put down most of my cities and other structures, now that I think about it. There was certainly enough room, and I could even add more mountains to divide the place up more if I felt like it.

I clapped my hands together, determined eyes looking straight ahead, before cracking my neck and getting to work. I had about five hours left before Naruto woke up if I had to guess, and I was anxious to show him the beginnings of my new layout.

Hopefully I wouldn't act weird now that the whole 'parent' thing had finally sunk in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't want to stick this in the main story, since I've never done a POV change before and don't plan on starting now, so this is more of an little added bonus slash crack drabble. I plan to write more of these, although this one does have a lot more plot than I thought it would xD I also didn't have time to let my beta-reader have a go at this, so I'm the only one that checked this over. But without further ado, here's the drabble!
> 
> Fugaku-sama was going to kill him. Hirume might as well kiss that date with the cute girl from the ramen stand goodbye, because as soon as his clan head found out that not only had he left a child, the Jinchūriki child, completely unsupervised in one of the most dangerous parts of the prison, he'd also gotten locked out on the other side of the secret door said child somehow managed to find.
> 
> Not to mention the way he'd reacted to being picked up. Hirume frowned, thinking back on the Uzumaki's extreme reaction when Hirume had laid his hand on his shoulder. That wasn't the reaction of a troublemaker being caught, that was something else, something much more sinister. Although, not entirely unexpected, considering how the village saw him.
> 
> It was definitely something to mention to Fugaku-sama, along with maybe Hokage-sama, although Hirume wasn't sure if telling the Sandaime would help, since he was already supposed to be in charge of Uzumaki-kun's health and safety, and if Hirume's suspicions were correct, he'd failed in that regard. It might be best to be safe and still tell him, if only because he seemed to be fonder of Uzumaki-kun than the Uchiha.
> 
> Now to get this damn door open. Hirume activated his Sharingan, trying desperately to see any way to open the door, or even any sign that it existed in the first place, but juts like the first four times he'd looked, there was nothing. It had to be some sort of mechanical system then, instead of anything using chakra. Lightly running his fingers over the wall, Hirume tried to feel for any bricks that felt different from the others, pressing whenever he felt even the smallest chip or smooth spot.
> 
> When nothing happened, Hirume kicked the wall in frustration, watching with stupefied anger as it popped open. It only took him a second to figure it out. Uzumaki-kun was a child, he wouldn't have reached this high unless he'd jumped, and according to him the door had opened when he leaned against the wall. Obviously, this meant the switch or button was much lower then he'd been looking.
> 
> Hirume slapped his hand to his face, cursing his own stupidity. This was the exact reason he'd been stuck with the night-shift at Block C for the fourth week in a row, he only connected the dots after the fact, never before. The young Uchiha shook himself out of his thoughts, stepping closer to where the door hung to get a closer look at the silent hinges. There weren't any silencing seals, so they must be very well lubricated...
> 
> A hauntingly familiar laugh startled Hirume out of his thought, two deceptively simple details failing to connect as he raced through the secret door, barely remembering to close it behind him, and out of the cell. He knew exactly who that laugh belonged to, having heard it enough times during the past four weeks, and him and Uzumaki-kun meeting could only spell disaster.
> 
> Sure enough, Uzumaki-kun was standing in front of his cell door, frowning in confusion at the cackling madman on the other side of the door. Hirume closed the little window with a clang, barely remembering to be slow and cautious when laying his hand on Uzumaki-kun's shoulder, leading him away in a hurry. He was a dead man now, Fugaku-sama was never going to forgive him for letting a child meet a prisoner, not to mention what Hokage-sama would do to him.
> 
> That girl had been so cute as well, there was no way he'd be allowed free time to go on a date with her now, not to mention all the work he'd put into planning their date. An elaborate picnic at one of the nicer training grounds in the Uchiha district, followed by watching the sunset with some of his Obasan's sake, after which he'd escort her home, taking the scenic route along the river.
> 
> This was more important though, so maybe if he left out the details, Ayame-chan would understand why he had to cancel.


	6. The Uchiha Problem (and solution)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inner renovates the mindscape (again), shows Naruto around and then finally sets him loose on the Uchiha problem, which he deals with in a decidedly Naruto way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry that this took so long to post, but my beta-reader is busy with college, and I decided to apply for NaNoWriMo this year, so I've been preparing for that. It's still not beta-read, but hopefully there won't be any big mistakes xD Without further ado, enjoy the chapter!

The next five hours flew by in a rush, years of experience letting me create a massive rolling green plain with just five gestures, mountains bursting out of the earth along the edges of the mindscape with two claps of my hands and a stomp of my left foot. Thus began a strange dance as I stretched my mind out, an invisible bubble of control surrounding the floor of of the mindscape. I could see everything inside that bubble, and all of it I could manipulate.

I unfroze everything that was fixed in the sky, a massive lake gushing into existence as I waited for them to fall into the bubble, dozens of rivers winding through the landscape, some ending in lakes of their own, others joining together and heading for the ocean that was waiting for them to the north of the landscape, which along with the southern end, was where the mindscape was the narrowest.

It didn't take too long after that for the first of the floating creations to fall into the bubble, and with nary a thought I directed it to it's spot, planting my lovely Jade Tower on a bit of land right in the middle of an azure blue lake, the glistening waters reflecting the sunlight onto the tower, it's golden highlights lighting up the lake in return, creating a dazzling display of lights.

Next to enter the bubble was Echo Bay, which barely needed any directing to get to it's spot, seeming to naturally know where it was supposed to go. The memory spheres had disappeared the moment the city had lost contact with the ground, I'd checked, but I felt them appear again when the city touched down on it's spot by the northern ocean, right between to rivers that flowed into the mass of water.

It seemed contact with the mindscape, or at least something that branched off from the original white walls, was necessary for the physical manifestations of Naruto's various mental functions to appear. Without that contact, they went back into their original intangible state. I was what brought them into existence, my presence was the whole reason the mindscape was even a thing. As far as the anime had shown, the only thing in Naruto's mind that actually had shape was Kurama's cage and the sewer it sat in.

The rest? Completely blank, as the encounters with his parents had shown. I didn't remember exactly what happened, but first Minato, then later his mother took Naruto away from the sewer to talk to him, and both times they talked in an empty white space, exactly like how the mindscape had been when I first appeared in it.

Although this really wasn't the time to be contemplating the intricacies of Naruto's mind and my influence on it, I had four cities, three castles in a valley, two monuments and two more towers falling from the sky, several of which had just entered the bubble at the same time. The strange dance that I'd been doing even while distracted suddenly sped up as I took control of two cities and the castle/valley combo, directing them to their place.

Twenty minutes later, the last tower had been plopped down in a clearing surrounded by cliffs on all sides, looking like it came right out of an animated Disney movie. It was all green grass and eternally blooming flowers, a little creek gently cascading down one of the cliffs and after curving around an ancient apple tree, fed into a little pond filled with koi fish. The small waterfall hid the valley entrance, leading out into a pretty forest filled with even more flowers and lush green trees.

Taking a distinctly Hunger Games twist though, every flower and tree was incredible deadly in different way. A single whiff of the daisies would close up your airway, leaving you gasping for air on the ground in seconds, while a single touch to some of the trees would give you an itchy rash that would get infected and leave you withering in mindless pain in minutes. The grass was supposed to trap any intruder, to keep them from simple leaving Naruto's mind until either he or I could make sure they hadn't seen something they shouldn't have.

Cruel maybe, but since it turned out that I also had memory spheres, which had appeared all over the clearing and the tower hidden within, I felt some heavy-duty protection was necessary. I was going with the assumption that anybody invading Naruto's mind would be an enemy, and I couldn't afford to have them waltz out with my knowledge of the future and Naruto's various weaknesses.

I'd have to create some other heavily trapped structures all over the mindscape as traps, and I was sure Naruto would be able to come up with some interesting traps himself. I might be rubbing off on the kid a little, because his natural creativity and talent when it came to traps and pranks had taken a bit of a mean turn.

I'd taught him compassion and forgiveness, yes, but I never scolded him when he showed some resentment for the way the villagers treated him. In the anime, nobody ever apologized to him for how they treated him like shit for years, not even Sakura, who was supposed to know better. Everybody had just assumed that the every-bright and happy Naruto had never held a grudge and that asking for forgiveness wasn't necessary.

Which had been true, to a point. They hadn't needed to apologize, but that wasn't because Naruto never resented them for how they treated him but because he was way too nice of a guy and had already forgiven them.

So if some of his pranks were a bit mean and had further reaching consequences than anybody really realized, well. It wasn't like I could tell anybody, and I made sure Naruto only targeted people that really deserved it with his more sadistic pranks. 

Bloody assholes.  
–

I was messing around with a flower design, trying to create something along the lines of that golden flower from Tangled, when I sensed that Naruto was starting to wake up. It was like the sun shone just that little bit brighter when he was awake, and the flower I had floating in front of me finally shone with the inner golden light I'd been aiming for.

A sense of giddy delight welled up in my chest, and I couldn't keep a massive grin from breaking out over my face. I planted the flower, several more immediately popping up all over the flied of flowers I'd been messing around with for the past two hours. Naruto was going to go crazy over the massive changes to the mindscape, and I couldn't wait to see how he reacted to my other plans. Space was going to blow his mind.

“Inner!” I laughed, turning around just in time for a blond bullet to hit me full force, sending the both of us tumbling through the flowers. “Inner, what did you do, everything looks so different and amazing! How long did this take, did you do this in one night? Did you see the Jade Tower Inner? It's on a lake, it looks to pretty!” Laughing again, I wrapped my arms around Naruto, pressing a kiss to his head. How could I ever think I'd be awkward around this little ball of sunshine?

I tilted my head, looking down only to be greeted with a massive grin and sparkling blue eyes, frames by a mess of blond spikes. “Yes, I saw the Jade Tower is on a lake, I was the one who put it there, Naru-chan.” Pressing a kiss to the tip of his nose, I sat up, Naruto sliding down to sit in my lap. “Do you want me to show you what else I did?” He didn't even let me finish my sentence before scrambling up out of my lap, yanking on my arm to get me to stand up quicker.

“Come on Inner, show me show me! I wanna see! Please?” He turned around, hitting me with his devastating puppy eyes. Considering I was the one to teach him how to do those, I was less than impressed, simply raising my eyebrow as my hands settled on my hips, holding my unimpressed expression for a few more seconds before letting my grin break through.

“Of course I'll show you Naru-chan, what do you take me for? And while showing you around, how about I tell you why exactly I made such major changes.” Nodding excitedly, Naruto grabbed my hand and pulled me onto the platform I'd called into existence, settling down next to me on the white seat that appeared and snuggling into my side. I laid my hand on his head, directing the platform to lift up off the ground with a twitch of my finger.

“You see Naru-chan, last night I had some ideas that I wanted to add, but no room for them, so I decided to make some more room...” I continued talking as the platform lifted off the ground, flying off towards the first of many stops. I wouldn't have to worry about hurrying, nobody would bother our body since we were sleeping right outside the Hokage's office, and sleeping in wasn't a concern either, since nobody actually used the bench in the secretary's office aside from us.

–

Naruto tended to wake up early, so even when the tour ended up taking two hours, it was only ten in the morning. It wouldn't have taken so long if I hadn't had to explain space to Naruto, who didn't even know the world was round, much less that the start were actually massive balls of burning gas in space and that the sun was one of them, just much closer. Explaining that space didn't have any gravity or atmosphere also took a while, although a lot of his questions I didn't have an answer to.

What? I wasn't a space expert, I had no idea about these kind of things aside from some general knowledge I picked up here and there.

The tour drew to a close just in time for Naruto's stomach to grumble, and with a grin I directed to platform to the ground. “It seems it's time for breakfast Naru-chan.” I got a sheepish grin in response, and without another word Naruto vanished from the mindscape, taking control of his body and slowly getting up, rubbing sleep from his eyes. I joined him, settling into place over Naruto's consciousness like a blanket.

The first thing we saw was wall, then the Hokage's secretary when we turned around. She was looking at us in amusement, ignoring the ninja cooling his heels in front of her desk. “I could hear that grumble all the way from over here, Uzumaki-kun. It might be best if you went to get yourself some breakfast, as tempting as it might be to go back to sleep.” What a weird, probably ANBU in disguise, lady.

“Thanks for letting me sleep on your bench, secretary lady! See ya later!” He ignored the now glaring shinobi with the ease of many years of practice, simply smiling sunnily before running out of her office, down the stairs and out into the village. “Naru-chan, if you want, you can have ramen for breakfast today. For your good behavior yesterday.” I was a firm believer in positive encouragement, it worked wonderfully most of the time and had the added benefit of letting you have a good relationship with your kid.

There were some lines was wasn't allowed to cross no matter what, but for the rest I let Naruto grow as he wanted to, only occasionally directing him away from something I didn't approve of. It wasn't a raising method that worked with all children, they needed to have a certain amount of self-reflection and intelligence for it to work, but Naruto had both those traits in spades, even if they hadn't been cultivated and encouraged right until much later in the original anime.

Kakashi was a disaster of a man, life had fucked his mental state over way too much for him to be capable of teaching three impressionable children properly, so it was only with Jiraiya that Naruto got the attention he needed to grow and develop his skills, and even then I had the suspicion that the Toad Sage had been blinded in part by Minato's ghost every time he looked at Naruto.

Both teachers had tried their best, and Naruto had turned out more than fine in the end, ending up incredibly powerful and well-developed as a person as well, but even now I could see that he could be so much more, if only somebody taught him how to use all the skills that he had at an early stage. And since nobody else was going to do it, that person was me.

Naruto had began running like a madman through the village the moment I suggested ramen for breakfast, and his dedication paid off, as not ten minutes later we were ducking into Ichiraku, calling out a greeting to Teuchi as we clambered onto one of the stools lining the bar. As always, Teuchi greeted Naruto with a grin, calling back in a cheerful voice if he wanted to usual.

I might not be too big a fan of instant ramen, but the stuff Teuchi served was in a whole other class, and not just because there was something other than just ramen and broth in the bowl. The noodles themselves I was sure were home-made, not to mention that Teuchi always managed to use fresh ingredients for the toppings and various meats that you could order. Pork ramen was our favorite, but the beef udon was as close second.

“Yes please Teuchi-san! Good morning, Ayame-chan!” The young woman had come out of the back when she'd heard Naruto's greeting, giving him a cheerful smile of her own, coming over to ruffle Naruto's hair over the counter. “Good morning to you too, Naruto-chan. How are you doing today, did you get enough sleep?” Ayame acted like an older sister to Naruto most of the time, something I would forever be grateful for.

Naruto nodded, nearly drooling as the smell of food hit us. “I went to talk to Jiji about something yesterday, I slept on the bench in his secretary's office. It's really comfy!” Ayame had tutted in disapproval when Naruto mentioned sleeping on a bench, but both chefs had already been close to Naruto when he'd gotten sick of the orphanage, and knew that it wasn't an ordinary bench. That didn't mean they approved though, and there was a faint frown on Ayame's face as she put our bowl in front of us.

“Comfy or not, you shouldn't be sleeping on benches Naruto-chan. Now eat your ramen, and tell me what you want after this one.” Naruto could never stop at just one bowl of ramen, not when it came to Ichiraku, and not just because it tasted like heaven in a bowl. His Uzumaki metabolism meant he needed more food than the average child, even clan kids, and Kurama's presence just amplified this. And Ichiraku's was the only place we could afford to eat as much as we needed to, since other restaurants and food stands charged us through the nose.

Humming in satisfaction at our first bite, I once again thanked the Kami for Teuchi and Ayame, because no matter how much I taught Naruto about cooking, and how good he got at it himself, nothing ever tasted as good as Ichiraku's ramen, or any other meal served here for that matter. There was just something about the food here that delighted our taste-buds, like every bite was an explosion of flavor.

Between that and our massive appetite, I wasn't surprised that we managed three bowls of ramen and two bowls of udon, and after drinking the last of the broth out of the big bowl, Naruto set it down with a happy sigh, rubbing his stomach. For the first time this week, we were finally completely full, and I felt it was entirely worth the hit our wallet was going to take because of this.

I didn't let Naruto eat this much here too often, knowing that money was tight and we needed to spend it on other things like clothes and groceries, but every once in a while I couldn't resist the wonderful taste of Teuchi's food, and we ended here, five large bowls finished and a larger than usual bill to pay. Of course, like usual, Teuchi insisted on giving us a discount, knowing money was tight for Naruto, and as usual we protested but gave in.

We had enough money to pay the full bill, but it would wipe us out, so instead Naruto settled for being incredibly grateful and declared that he'd pay both Teuchi and Ayame-chan back in full once he became Hokage, with me adding my own silent promise to have Naruto look out for the two chefs during all the insanity that would happen in Konoha over the years. They made it through even without my interference, but I wanted to make absolutely sure they came out of the next ten years or so unscathed.

After saying his goodbyes to Teuchi and Ayame, Naruto left the ramen stand, taking the scenic route back to his apartment. Usually when we walked through the village, most of my attention was directed at the villagers themselves and how they reacted to Naruto, picking out those that could maybe be persuaded to give us food or clothes at normal prices if we played our cards right, but this time I was more interested in both how they reacted to the Uchiha, and how the Uchiha reacted to us.

And to be honest, even with my years of experience reading the Konoha civilians I still wouldn't have noticed anything if I hadn't known there was something to look for. Little signs I might have written off, moments of hesitation where there shouldn't be when they caught sight of a shinobi in the Police Force uniform. Things that didn't mean anything when taken separately, but made for a much more disturbing picture when put together.

Thinking back, I could remember other moments when I had noticed something was odd, but had written it off as either a reaction to Naruto or something else. Even now, their anger was more directed at Naruto, so it might be even worse when he wasn't there to distract them. And the more I saw, the angrier I got. Who the FUCK did they think they were, to treat their protectors with such distrust? After all the Uchiha had done for them, all they'd given up?

I wasn't even going to bother with the small guns, I was going to straight for the throat. “Ne Naruto, I just noticed something.” The words sounded innocent enough, but Naruto had known me since he was born, and my tone spelled the worst of trouble for someone. “Whatever it is, it better not get us in trouble with Fugaku-sama, he's nice.” Oh you had no idea the trouble Fugaku was already in, Naru-chan.

“Just the opposite Naru-chan, I think he'll love it if we manage to do something about what I noticed. Take a careful look around, and tell me how the villagers react to the Uchiha when they spot one.” Five-years-old or not, Naruto had been learning how to read people right along with me for years, and it didn't take long for him to notice what I had, and the moment he did I felt a wave of confusion hit me.

“They treat them like us. Inner, why would they treat the Uchiha like us? Aren't they the ones in charge of the internal safety of the village?” I sighed, Naruto's sad and confused mental voice tugging at my heart. “They are, and I have some suspicion as to why this is happening, but I'm afraid the Uchiha aren't like you Naru-chan. They don't had an Inner themselves to shield them, so even if it's not as bad as with us, it affects them more than they let on.”

Aaaaand protectiveness activated. It really only took a few seconds for Naruto to decide to imprint on someone, to help them and try to shield them from the world if necessary, and I allowed myself a proud smile when I felt the rush of indignant anger from Naruto, although I had to choke down my guilt at the way I was manipulating him. He was supposed to be able to trust me, and I rewarded him by using him by getting him involved in a situation he wasn't prepared to deal with.

The knowledge that the Sandaime wouldn't let anybody kill Naruto was a cold comfort, especially since I knew just how ruthless Danzo was, and how far he would go if he felt he was in the right. In the anime, he'd tried to have Sarutobi assassinated, a man that he'd been rivals with for years and who still considered him a friend he could trust. There wasn't a doubt in my mind that he'd take us out, one way or another, if he felt we were too big a threat, crazy bastard that he was.

This would have to be very, very public, I couldn't leave Danzo with any shadows to interfere from. The Sandaime would hopefully let us be, I wasn't sure he trusted the Uchiha enough to let Naruto claim them as friends, but then again, this was Naruto we were talking about. The kid was as stubborn as a mule, and once he thought of somebody as a friend, come hell or high water he'd to his best to stick to that friend, even if it was clan full of stuck-up pricks with fancy red eyeballs.

Itachi allowing Naruto's friendship with Sasuke would do a whole lot to calm the Uchiha clan, even if their clan elders might throw a fit over the Jinchūriki being so close to the clan heir and the second in line. The creepy teen was notoriously protective of his little brother, so his lack of interference said a lot, and would hopefully carry enough weight to make the rest of the clan back off. I only needed to keep Fugaku off our backs, then we were golden.

Despite Naruto's righteous anger though, we still needed a shower and a change of clothes, and this wasn't something to tackle without at least some semblance of a plan, so we continued on our way back to the apartment. One lukewarm shower later, Naruto curled up on our shabby little couch with a fluffy blanket, closing his eyes and letting go of his control, popping into existence on the pier of Echo Bay to so that we could come up with a plan.

After some discussion, we decided that making tracking down Hirume and solidifying our friendship would be the first step, along with making Naruto's friendship with Sasuke public by dragging him and Itachi to Ichiraku's for ramen. The end goal would be to get the Uchiha out of their compound and back out into the village, which would show the civilians that they weren't that scary. I also had a vague plan in the back of my mind inspired by a story I read somewhere, which involved having Itachi make some friends of his own.

Hell, it might even teach him how to be less of an obsessive and emotionally stunted preteen if he had regular social interactions with people not from his constipated-looking clan. I doubt it would do anything, but miracles could happen, especially with Naruto involved.

–

Apparently miracles were real, who knew. Not that we managed to make Itachi any less creepy or emotionally brain-dead, but after some nagging, we found out that Ayame was supposed to go on a date with an Uchiha the night we accidentally broke into the Konoha prison, and with even more nagging, we got his name out of her. And guess who the young sucker was?

Uchiha Hirume, the guy that found us wandering where we weren't supposed to, and had to cancel because of the whole 'massive breach in security, must be fixed ASAP' thing. Naruto had felt so guilty about the whole thing, especially since Ayame had really been looking forward to it and was obviously bothered by being stood-up without proper explanation.

He'd spilled the beans about accidentally getting into somewhere he wasn't supposed to, and how Hirume probably had to cancel to deal with the aftermath of that. He'd then offered to track Hirume down and drag him back to Ichiraku's so that they could have their date right then and there, refusing to back down when Ayame tried to refuse with a blush.

Teuchi-san proved once again that he was awesome, and chipped in that they never got many customers on Wednesday, after which Naruto added that if Teuchi-san really needed help, Naruto could do the dishes just fine. “Come on, Ayame-chan, please? He's a really nice guy, and I know you want to do. It'll be fine!”

Nobody could withstand Naruto's puppy eyes, and he took off like shot after the young woman nodded, throwing a parting comment over his shoulder as he went. “You should have time to put on something pretty, if you want!” Of course, Naruto didn't have any idea where to even begin looking for Hirume, but luck worked with us, and he found us.

Apparently Fugaku wanted to ask us some more questions now that he'd had the chance to take a look at the door himself, which thankfully only took about twenty minutes, after which Naruto asked if it was okay if he borrowed Hirume for a while, pretty pretty please? I smirked as Naruto's puppy eyes claimed another victim, although the clan head give us a two-hour time-limit.

Plenty of time for a date!

–

From what Ayame had told us afterwards, Hirume had been the perfect gentlemen, and despite some of the looks she'd gotten for being with an Uchiha, she'd had a very good time, and they had another date planned for when Hirume next had free time. Naruto was delighted that his sister-figure had found a nice, I was equally happy that the next date was going to be a public as the first, dinner at a nice restaurant.

Yes, I was also ecstatic that Ayame and Hirume had managed to go on their date after-all, and that they both seemed to really like each other, but I wasn't going to deny that it might do a lot of good to see an Uchiha not just going on a date with somebody outside of their clan, but also with a civilian. Plus, young love was adorable, something I could appreciate in a way I couldn't before.

The next thing that helped change the way the Uchiha were perceived was when Naruto dragged Sasuke and Itachi to Ichiraku's not three days after Ayame's date in an attempt to appease the younger sibling's ire. The little Uchiha hadn't been happy that Naruto had missed they daily hangouts, more so since the blonde refused to explain why he hadn't been able to come.

Itachi had just looked on with knowing eyes, obviously informed by his father what had happened, and surprisingly enough, he'd been the one to suggest skipping their usual training session in favor of eating out. Naruto had pipped up that he knew a good ramen place, one thing led to another, and the next thing you know the whole village is talking about the demon brat hanging around Sasuke, and the notoriously protective Uchiha clan heir letting it happen.

I'm sure we caused the Sandaime plenty of headaches and several piles of added paperwork thanks to out actions, but I was still feeling a bit mean and petty about his snub against the Uchiha, so I only encouraged Naruto to hang out with Sasuke in public more often with a faint smirk. Yes, I was a bit of a bitch, and no, I didn't care. The old man should have known better than to buy into the rumors, if this is what it took to fix the mess he'd let happen, so be it.

And here we were, three months after the Prison Incident, as Naruto liked to call it, hanging out with Sasuke and Itachi at Ichiraku's. It had been an eventful time, during which we'd spent more time around Uchiha's than ever before. Hirume, when he'd finally managed to drag himself away from work, had hunted down Naruto to thank him for making time for his date with Ayame, and found us hanging out with Sasuke.

The Police Force member had been astounded to find us just casually playing a game of ninja tag with his clan head's youngest son, and his shocked look had turned positively gobsmacked when he'd spotted Itachi observing with one of his minuscule smile's. Most of the clan had probably never seen Itachi show any kind of emotion, much less amusement, but Hirume had done an admirable job of pulling himself together and calling out to Naruto.

This had led to Naruto latching on to the older Uchiha just as he had with Sasuke, and soon enough the poor sucker was dividing most of his free time between dates with Ayame and hanging out with Naruto and Sasuke, both of which regularly conned him into paying for their food or teaching them cool shinobi tricks.

Sure, they could have just asked Itachi, but most of his tricks were too deadly and dangerous to teach to children, for all that he was only eleven himself, so he'd been very briefly ignored in favor of the oldest Uchiha of their little group. Apparently as possessive of Sasuke as Sasuke was of him, he'd shown up the next day armed with several child-friendly shinobi tricks to teach his little brother and his best friend.

This ended up sparking a mostly one-sided rivalry between an annoyed Itachi and a terrified Hirume to see who was better at taking care of kids, which hilariously enough Hirume kept winning simply because Itachi was horrible with any kids that weren't his endlessly devoted younger brother. Uchiha Shisui, Itachi best and only friend who just showed up one day, found this to be absolutely hilarious, even joining in on the competition.

I was sure someone more responsible than me would have done their best to prevent Naruto and Shisui from meeting, but I just kept on cackling and poked Naruto into starting a prank war with ANBU together with the Uchiha. Okay yes, that sounded like a horrible idea, but in my defense I just suggested that maybe Shisui would want to help with developing Naruto's pranks.

That this turned into an all-out war with ANBU that escalated in a major way in just two weeks was something I blamed entirely on Shisui. I couldn't deny that nailing an ANBU with an incredibly familiar nest of gray hair in the face with one of our new tree-sap/glitter combo tags had been very satisfying. After all, how many people could say that they'd gotten one over the famous Hatake Kakashi?

Sure, it had probably helped that the young shinobi had frozen when he'd first spotted Naruto, no doubt because he saw Minato's ghost every time we came close, but still. Kakashi was going to be leaving a path of glitter behind for weeks, that stuff wasn't something you just washed off, especially since we'd mixed it with tree-sap. That was one uniform Hound could kiss goodbye, that shit was never coming out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kakashi sighed, one hand plucking absently at his glitter-covered uniform, a rainbow's worth of color sparkling cheerfully in his bathroom's weak light. He'd been meaning to replace it, but there had always been another mission waiting, so he'd never had the time. But that might just be a good thing, since even in this weak light it nearly hurt to look at himself in the mirror. That might also have something to do with coming face-to-face with Minato's son for the very first time, but Kakashi was happy to blame the glitter.
> 
> The boy (Naruto, but even the name hurt to think about, because Kakashi remember how excited Minato had been, how much the man had been looking forwards to having a son) had barely come up to his hips, a wide grin on his face and his hands full of tags. Kakashi had seen the tag coming, knew his could dodge with ease but something had kept him rooted in place as the blonde boy darted away to find another target.
> 
> There wasn't any point in trying to save the uniform, the tree-sap mixed in with the glitter would make it hell to get out and giving away his position on a mission because of some left-over glitter would be a shame he'd never life down. The armor would be much simpler to clean, the sap had hardened in such a way he could just scrape it off, and any left-over glitter could simple be scrubbed off, although he might have to request a replacement mask as some red glitter had gotten into some of the tiny cracks it had sustained on his latest mission.
> 
> (He also had a new scar on his back from that same mission, he'd been distracted and one of the enemy nin had gotten in a lucky hit that nearly took his head off. Kakashi firmly ignored the memory of Genma's pointed suggestion that he needed a break. He was fine, he just needed to pay more attention.)
> 
> Besides, there was something he had to investigate. The boy shouldn't have known anything about seals (he should, he should. It was in his blood, with parents like his it would be an insult if he didn't learn), and yet he'd been able to seal his glitter/tree-sap mix into a tag, not to mention he'd been hanging around a commonly used ANBU exit. Somebody had helped him, and when Kakashi found out who it was, they were going to suffer.
> 
> –
> 
> Shisui shivered, and with a grin he glanced over to where he'd set the Uzumaki kid loose. He'd been helping him prank some of his more easy-going fellow ANBU, supplying him with some basic timed sealing tags and a general area to hang around, along with making sure the kids knew which masks to avoid. He'd still been having a hard time actually getting any ANBU, because most of them could feel him coming a mile away, but apparently he'd finally nailing one.
> 
> Because after years of being ANBU, and even longer being a shinobi, Shisui had gotten intimately familiar with this particular shiver. Somebody was out to get him, and honestly the Uchiha couldn't wait to see who the kid had gotten.
> 
> The blond brat had been over the moon when Shisui offered to help him prank someone, and when the kid asked if he could help prank a particular ANBU agent, he'd only hesitated for a second before agreeing. Uzumaki didn't know it, but he'd doing a lot to mend the bond between the village and the Uchiha clan with his antics, he deserved some sort of reward for that.
> 
> Besides, Shisui was more than equipped to either deal with or run away from any ANBU, aside from maybe Itachi. And the Captain, but he was too good to let himself be hit. Right?


	7. Hiatus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On hiatus until after November 2017

What The FU-dge... will temporarily go into hiatus since I'm currently participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and I do not have the time or energy to spare to meet the daily goal of 1667 words a day and write chapter 7 as well. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, and once November ends I will probably take a break from the story I'm writing for than and work on the next chapter for WtFU. It shouldn't take long to write, as I'm getting much better at writing more words a day regularly. 

Also, I am in need of a new beta reader, since my current one is busy with uni and I don't want to add to their workload by asking if they can edit something for me. If you're interesting in becoming my beta reader, you can send me a PM or email me at winryrockbell902@gmail.com.

Thank you for supporting me so much, and I'll see you soon!


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